Abandoned Mercury Mine - Cle Elum Mining District Washington

coming off a side Trail here into a little uh clearing area that overlooks the creek and we spotted it from above and it looks like an old cabin site of some kind so we're going to check it out real quick looks like there's probably a fire in this area at some point or the cabinet itself just was burned so we're going to have to verify when we get uh back just to see if we're correct in what we're thinking that this may be um The Denny cabin site but we're going to double check when we uh can do some additional research just to make sure we're in that area and we'll put that below if it is the Denny cabin site so as we were continuing up the trail here we spotted what looks like uh a really old cabin site that we're going to make our way down to and show you not 100% sure um what this cabin was um there was a lot of cabins out here related to mining kind of like the first one we saw that we believe was the Denny cabin coming in right in front of me here so we come up on it there's not a lot left but you can still make out kind of the foundation Timbers here the lower just a little bit of a hand stacked rock wall for the foundation and it looks like some old stove parts which is pretty common to see a lot of cans and other trash out here pretty cool to see I always love finding remnants of structure and artifacts mines are cool I enjoy that as well but this is this is the stuff that I think is really neat to still find out when we're doing this so it's pretty cool that there's even this much of it still here and next to this uh other cabin which is right up there it looks like there was a second one probably sitting right here you can make out some of the Stacked rocks it looks like the Timbers are long gone it's a flat spot right here and there's some additional stones stacked on this side as well so there was two cabins kind of side by side right here going to jump back up on the trail and continue on our way to the uh Boulder Creek mine and uh again we'll just continue to share um along the way as we uh see different things that we'd like to show you so coming up the trail here where it kind of takes a Bend back towards the creek saw these stacked up rocks and it looks like another cabin site obviously from some mining activity out here again some really old rusted debris and metal kind of see where was stacked up here looks like over here it's part of a pipe and a fire brick so again we'll look at our uh historical information when we get back and see if we can pinpoint something more specific on the site so you can kind of make out just the bottom layer of the cabin that's still sort of there it looks like maybe here there might have been a door and then here it picks up again and then what little is left runs that way it's kind of the flat area and take a walk over this way I see a few more chunks of metal and just see if anything's over here hey so we're going to continue up the trail and we'll see you along the way so just a short distance up the trail from the cabin site we were just at we came across another cabin site here you can kind of make out the timers a little better on this one looks like there's some fire brick here turn it over and see if it has any markings on it don't see any another interesting area of note is up here kind of hard to see with the sun glaring but it looks like some mining activity so we'll try to see if we can figure out a way to check that out as well okay so we made our way down to the creek and now we're going to see how we're going to get up there that so hopefully here in a minute or three we'll see you at the top so unfortunately this one appears to be completely collapsed but you just don't know until you go look so energy wasted information gained all right so we're going to make our way back down and get back on the trail and continue on to the boulder mine all right so we're getting close to halfway um got some elevation change and a crappy rded out Trail all in this is like I think six miles round trip roughly oh yeah so we got a lot of up here all right we're going to see when we get to the top okay so we haven't been running the camera so we could preserve some battery power but also uh these switchbacks and the elevation gain was quite a bit coming up so um didn't want to have to have you all listening to me huffing and puffing on the way up but as soon as we uh kind of came to a flat um as we turned the uh Trail Corner we came on this uh looks like a cabin mining campsite so we'll go see what's out here so again uh stove parts some fire brick uh pots and pans there the fire brick it's like a sardine can right there got a frying pan over here and we are out here a ways um I'm guessing we're probably close to 3 miles out now yeah so I'm not sure if this was directly associated with the mine we headed to I assume it would be um unless there's another workings uh right around here but again we'll do some research um when we get back and pinpoint what this is and we'll put it at the bottom of the screen but now um we're going to continue up this Trail as it gains elevation still and hopefully uh I don't know within a half hour or so we'll be at the actual site we're trying to reach just kind of show you some last bit of artifacts here all right so we'll see you uh very shortly we've about reached the top of where we were headed so we're just going to continue up this Trail here all right so this is primarily what we came up here to see um as part of this mine uh which this mine produced cabar and that's the ore of mercury and so rather than uh try to transport The Ore out of here um the owners of the mine um built this Mercury tort here so they could uh process the orea here and on this side we walk over here I don't know if it's still visible but there would have been a fire box um on this side and then uh the flu gases uh conducted across the outside of the tubes there that you see and then they vented um through a stack that is probably gone and then the Crush door be loaded into the cylinders and uh the end scene here would be sealed off and then the Mercury uh Vapor would discharge through smaller tubes um on the opposite opposite end of the cylinders and then the vapor then conducted through water traps where it would condense into liquid metal uh to be contained uh in the water so kind of a comp at a process there to uh process the uh cinear or but again this mine uh you know dates back uh to the 1890s and it was worked um probably I'm guessing into the uh the 30s um somewhere in there but this is really cool that it's still still out here take a look back behind it here so you can see these smaller tubes on the back which come off those larger Chambers and all these fire break have uh markings on them they all look like they might be from like maybe Tacoma I don't know or TCA rather maybe not just Mis reading that and there you can see how they could be sealed off if you look in there and then see how this would have come across and then you would have tightened it down to seal up the ends with that plate okay we're going to peek around the area here and see what else we can find that might be out here and we'll uh check back in with you momentarily okay so the small mine add it that is up here um is going to be kind of in the center of the screen past that big boulder and up and over so uh we're going to take a quick look around down here and then we're going to start making our way up to that and we will see you uh once we get up there okay so we're at a elevation of about 5,500 feet and we located the waist dump down below but we don't see the little tunnel there's only a 30ft tunnel but we're not seeing it so we're wondering if perhaps it collapsed or was covered by a slide but we're going to look around a little further um either way it was a good trip saw a lot of cool cabin sits and the uh the Mercury ovens

Channel: Ghost Towns and Mines of Washington

Views: 2,247

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Id: O6eujhYLFrw

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 04 2023