A Visually Stunning Lead-Zinc-Silver Mine - The Deeper We Go, The Better It Gets

this is a a very old mine apparently dates back to the late 1800s could have been worked possibly in the 1870s according to the other mines in the area okay so the site has some pretty interesting things to see at the top um here looks like we have a anvil stump and this would have been the blacksmiths forge you can even see pieces of slag inside of it and see there's a whole bunch of foundations over here there's some kind of cistern or something it's also possible this was like a a smelter for the uh the lead silver ore and scattered all over this waste rock pile there's a bunch of calcite like that's a bunch of calcium right there and you can find a bunch of crystals that are perfectly shaped it's uh like a cuboidal shape if that's even word i don't know but it's sort of like a a cube but the angles are a bit off yeah that's a perfect crystal of calcite right there here's another foundation and right next to the head frame there's some stops going down that's crazy yeah and then here's a closer look at the shaft you can see they were running a bucket up this let me see if i can get more light but uh this apparently goes down 400 feet and i'm not really sure how many um horizontal workings are down here but based off of the waste rock pile i imagine it's pretty extensive and right up here you can see the the bucket catch so there were two rods in the sides of the bucket and as it slid up here those rods were catching here and that'll allow them to flip the bucket over and dump it into whatever is waiting here fortunately the uh the sheave wheel was taken but still this is a really neat structure a lot of head frames are disappearing so it's always nice to see a standing one okay so we're back at this mine um the last time we were here i filmed the surface workings and we did go inside the mine but we weren't able to complete it so we're back here today and i'm just going to start at the uh the beginning of the underground workings and give you a tour of what we saw last time and then hopefully we see uh the bottom levels of this mine so this at it right here should connect with the incline shaft we see up there and let's go head on in get lights ready yeah you can see the incline up ahead this little dead end right here yeah just for a second yeah and then it levels levels back out oh you gotta be there goes your gopro yeah so the drift keeps going that way but it's collapsed and we think we can get over it and here's a look up the incline shaft it's pretty neat you can see the head frame look at all that timber work all right here's another view up the shaft and here's a view down it you can see it gets steep but um you know it's only steep for about i don't know 30 feet and then it sort of levels out again but behind me the drift continues past a pretty big collapse and just look at these boulders that scaled off the back there yeah huh so it looks like there's some stops going down quite a long ways and there's a little drift running off past it i've got to be careful not to slip here oh wow look at that ladder in there see that that's a really big stop okay i don't feel okay i'm gonna shut my camera off because this looks pretty tough to cross over like any wrong move and i'm going all the way down there which is about a 50 feet drop or more all right so xavier is trying to cross over to that drift but we're thinking we don't want to do it because it's really sketchy but we just realized that we were actually in a natural cave do you see those formations right there this whole area this light lighter area is a natural cave the miners broke into that is really awesome [Music] look at that yeah dude that's i mean i got footholds and stuff but it's steep but i think i'm getting across i don't know dude that last section that's that's going to be really tough how are you going to get that it really keeps going after that or i see some shining my light looks like there's another winds with like a ladder or something looks like i see the top of a ladder well now i gotta know well the thing is down on the the first level down there's a bunch of stops that go up so it's so instead you want to try climbing up those stops instead of crossing this because well once i make like a path across i don't think it's going to be so bad it's just again that path and i'm almost there it's just like one more good i don't know dude that's that last section that's like all the pants yes yeah honestly i wouldn't i would turn back dude does it look that bad yeah really all right so i'm about to climb down the main incline um but before i did xavier found a little goodie it's a cut piece of dynamite and it says january 20th 1913. that is really cool 40 strength nice and this looks like hercules powder yeah there's a to me there's a cross section of the end there you can see there's the sealed end so the other end maybe they cut in half for half strength and then they shove the blasting cap in or they maybe they never even got the cap in it all right so i'm heading down and right by my foot there's a little roller still rolls and you don't want to step on it as a run because your foot would just slip off yeah i'm trying to film as i go down absolute mad lad you see here's another roller and stepping on that that's not a good foothold because it's just gonna pull right off jesus yeah so it gets really steep because then you can see it leveling off right there at the bottom all right so there's actually a little level here only about 20 feet down the shaft i don't think it goes very far from what i remember making on solid ground it looks like they're just using it as a trash receptacle oh yeah that's the face of it right over there yeah just a bunch of uh scraps of stuff this looks like a handle all right so let's get back on the ladder and keep heading down all right so there's xavier working his way down and i just reached the end of the steep part it uh levels out and then gets a bit steep again and then where my other buddy is is the the first drift level and right up above my head is another roller this one's on the the back now this is a really neat incline shaft and this mine was started in the 1890s and worked into the 20th century as far as i know i'm just kind of walking down this part backwards a piece of a dynamite box and you can see another roller right up ahead okay so we're on the 200 foot level right now this is the first level below the one we entered um the one we entered is the 50 foot level according to the the mining reports that i have and there should be another uh three levels down here the lowest being 400 feet deep and then on the 400 foot level there's a 240 foot winds and i'm not sure if there are any workings off that winds but we're gonna try to find out today but for now let's go explore the 200 level uh you can see someone placed a little crystal of calcite in this little nook here and it's a perfect shape that's really nice and we have a whole bunch of artifacts here yeah we have some newspaper fragments this one's from 1911 and it's talking about some silver ores in mexico i'm not going to try to pronounce that we have a union carbide can looks like a medium sized one and we have another newspaper fragment and this one is from 1916 by the looks of it yeah that's awesome we have a little ladder here and it looks like we have some stops running down as well as up and these don't go down too far it looks like they might be backfilled and another ray is going up beautiful crystals everywhere the geology in this mine is fantastic and when we get down a couple levels the geology gets really amazing some modern newspaper in here and yeah this is the stove that i think goes up to where we were okay yeah there's some more newspaper fragments all the tops are missing so i don't know the years on them hey did you see that little uh tobacco pouch back there actually i did it oh you got to check that out it's got a picture of benjamin franklin on the the freshness seal and then it's got a picture of a cow on the string for tightening for like the agricultural seal okay yeah i'll definitely check that out yeah here we have a winds has a pretty cool collar and i'd say that goes down at least 50 feet yeah look at this look at this mineralization in here that is gorgeous and look at all that calcite that is awesome yeah so that ends right there yeah the last time but we didn't climb up there because we were sort of rushing it so i'm pretty sure this stop uh runs up to that natural cave we're checking out there's a passage over here wow oh and it keeps going let me see if i can get through it okay i just climbed up the stopaways and you can see you have this ladder up here at a pretty weird angle and so you're just checking out this little drift doesn't go anywhere no it gets narrower narrower it's all backfill okay you want to try climbing up this oh that's clogged there's a big rock though no dude that's completely clogged so yeah no no go there and looking up where that ladder was i think it's clogged up there as well this is treacherous [Applause] yeah that's clogged beyond the ladder so i'm pretty sure this did go up to uh where we were before but not anymore but still just look at the the colors in here okay so you may have heard xavier talk about this little tobacco pouch he found well here it is yeah this thing is really neat looks like a is that ben franklin you said i think so i don't know it's hard it might be to tell little tag here yeah that's awesome i've never seen one of these yeah it usually comes in a tin well maybe this was inside the tin like oh so the tin seals it and then this is just to keep it from falling out maybe maybe i don't know incredible how clean the seal is and everything it's definitely old yeah that's a really neat find okay so right here we have a tuxedo tobacco can this is new to me i've never seen one of these before and also a wrapper for what does this say white countered gouda maybe it's italian fuse so it's a gouda fuse that was a good one coast manufacturing and supply company all right so we're on the 250 foot level and we're actually hardly below the level we're just on and this one's pretty neat because it has rail in it and splits off that way let's keep going let's keep following the rails look at how light this rock is and then there's these pockets of mineralization throughout that's the face right there and it looks like we have a little winds here i bet that um goes down to the next level but uh it doesn't go up too high all right so not really much down this drift but there is the one with the horseshoe that is gorgeous hey this doesn't say anything huh no the lid comes on off real nice some more calcite that's everywhere and yeah this one this doesn't go too far huh uh there's a winds going down and a whole bunch of calcium yeah i remember this level was pretty tiny but the one below which was the last one we explored on my previous trip um that one is really interesting okay so it looks like we have a backfilled winds here and yeah a whole bunch of calcite okay so here off to the side we found a pipe stem and this is a really neat find and it'd be amazing to find a complete one but still that's pretty neat and then this right here is a stalactite or stalagmite um that must have came from right over here because you can see there's a bit of flow stone so likely there's a little void right in this area that they broke into probably wasn't a very big cave i'm sure there's a bunch of you know small cavities all throughout this mountain all right let's go work our way down to the 300 level and from what i heard there's a dead tarantula over here i think yeah i see them right here another interesting thing these rollers the end of them you notice it's a single like uh piece of pipe that's you know funnel shape yeah i think it's off of something else i think they repurposed it maybe it's the bottom of you know like bar stools from a saloon or something i don't know but it's weird that they only have that one end and then yeah this is where the cable is running on this side you can see the groove so yeah yeah so there's the dead tarantula okay we are now on the 300 foot level and this was the last level that i explored the last time i was here and this one was pretty neat so here we have a bag of portland cement and a piece of a drill rod right here and probably the best part about this level is the geology and this right here is calcite but if you notice it's all through here they dug a drift through pretty much solid calcite and the rails actually go off you know this backfield area but i believe this drift will loop around and you'll be able to get over there yeah they dug this drift through solid calcite and i don't know i've just never seen anything like this it's really interesting got some daubing here yeah this is really impressive it's the best calcite i've ever seen the crystal grains are huge it's really uh pure stuff by the looks of it oh wow yeah i remember this big stop here and look uh hercules powder definitely looks like an old one and we also have a little winds going down here yeah the geology in here is is really some of the best i've seen just look at this pillar they left here and how they left a portion of the vein just look at that it's like a rainbow that's awesome check out the colors on these yeah i know it's fantastic contrast it's just incredible yeah that really dark rock that almost looks like it's volcanic you know yeah it sounds like glass you know it's very uh very hard but brittle and there's some copper stuff yeah i don't know what this stuff is really this stuff's really soft so very neat let me uh squeeze on by yeah yeah some really neat uh normalization around the corner there oh wow i really hope the camera is doing it justice i'm sure it's not but yeah just look at that i don't know if i already mentioned this but this was a lead zinc and silver mine just look at the crystal grains in this calcite that is fantastic yeah so lead zinc and silver a little bit of gold most likely and i believe it was pretty rich started in the 1890s yeah look at this wow yeah so there's this like almost black rock it looks like it's covered in like ice or something it's really tiny looks like they look like perfectly clear quartz crystals on there this is just awesome wow yeah i'm definitely i definitely know the camera is not doing it justice but yeah this is some of the best geology i've ever seen and as if i remember correctly if you crawl through here this loops around and then uh meets up right by the incline where that rail was going we have some burlap bags or canvas bags wow okay just look at this look at the texture on there that is really weird that's cool oh god just look at that vein little stop running off that way and this bag it has riding on it but it's way too torn up i get a lot of comments saying why don't you show more of the geology and talk about more of the geology well i hope uh this video satisfies that yeah so this right here if you crawl through it oh hey there you are yeah this goes right by the shaft where those rails were going so we pretty much just completed the level and if i don't see anything else interesting then um i'm gonna go head down the shaft and everything below where we're at now is gonna be completely new to me and i really hope there's some interesting stuff so okay so i found this rock here and it looks metallic like i don't know if this is actual lead or zinc because it looks and feels metallic like it's cold like when you touch metal because it's so you know conductive of heat i don't know it really looks like it might be metallic okay guys we made it down to the 400 level and it is really awesome down here so this is the bottom of the main shaft but i think i mentioned earlier that there was a 200 foot winds or 240 foot winds off off this level and here it is right here and my buddy is already heading down there seeing where it goes and it's kind of interesting you can see there's pieces right here for the uh the bucket slide and there must have been some kind of mechanism so either they could lower the bucket all the way down here to the bottom of this or they could transition it to this winds and slide the bucket down this way yeah because there is some stuff here in the back that was probably for that and i think the uh the geology down here is even better than the one that was up above and there there's some artifacts here too including the shovel some raisins that's not an artifact um this roller find anything else cool uh sort of the rock samples get better and better better and better look at how clean they start to get nice wow chunks and whatnot yeah that's a great house i think that roller says something is it oh yeah young young stone youngstown looks like it huh that's really cool also this looks like a trap door loop oh yeah and that wasn't cap grease okay looked like a california block thing [Music] i mean this is within our lifetime but it's becoming an antique shop film yep yeah this is uh that's really cool look at that calcite like just just the size of this individual crystals oh you should see the room around amazing it just keeps getting better and better this mine's phenomenal wow well there's a whole bunch of pockets of very fine uh uh iron sulfide okay or pyrite yeah it'd be cool to climb up in some of these you know little pockets but there might be some artifacts left up in there yeah so the drift running off that way and i love the rail in this drift oh look yeah here's the pyrite or i don't know if it's iron pyrite or if it's just some it's definitely some kind of sulfide mineral might be uh some zinc mineral yeah that is awesome wow and look at how around the ends of it or the edges of the pockets it's like decomposing that is really strange yeah this is definitely the mine you want to go to if you're interested in geology because this is just incredible and it's all through here looks like there's a winds over here let's have a look at that well it looks like it's back filled and uh the main drift keeps going looks like the rail's end though [Applause] wow i hope uh all the uh the shots of the geology in here aren't boring you it's definitely not boring me i guess it depends on how it looks on the camera something running off that way [Music] and there's a oh i think that's the little little winds that we saw on the actually that was two levels above so maybe not and uh yeah there's like a wind going down here huh just beautiful calcite crystals yeah i'm guessing because there's all these stops going down but at the bottom of the winds the 240 foot winds there's a major haul level that'd be my guess i don't want to go down here too far okay okay more beautiful calcite and this that gets really steep so this is going to be it for me but i have a feeling that we're going to see the bottom of this if we keep climbing down those ladders there is something coming up that way it looks like it just faces out though okay here's the first junction i came to so let's go ahead down this left hand drift a little hole going down there huh look at that bane and just faces out now this level was just amazing absolutely amazing all right so i'm back at the shaft station and i'm now going to head down this winds my buddy's coming up and he said there's some really cool stuff down there but i'm gonna have to make it um pretty quick because uh we're running out of daylight and time and we want to get back to camp so i'm probably not gonna film on the way down the ladder and i'll just pick up at the first level we find okay so i just made it down the winds and from what i hear this level is even better than the one up above i mean where to start off right there we have some minor graffiti from 1918. that's really awesome and the floor here is just littered with drill rods sounds really skinny and then uh the ones over here i think they're really old here because i don't know if i don't think these ones have holes for water so these ones are are the uh the widowmaker kind and right here we have a a hand steel for hand drilling now that is awesome some efflorescence on the walls and yeah i've got to make this kind of quick because we're running out of time so again just beautiful mineralization through here but similar to the stuff you saw earlier and it looks like we have a track switch here that works that's cool and a broom that keeps going off for a long ways what's that you're prying at well i'm trying to get this big rock to come out so that i can get i don't know if you can see these little samples see these guys are they i don't know if they're coming out right oh i don't know i see that but i'd like to try and get it out it's definitely some kind of this fight i think this stuff's really hard so i was going to try and get a chunk out yeah this this looks like limestone yeah really hard limestone yeah wow so the drift running off that way check out this uh yeah accumulator tank you know this was exactly like the one that's in lars is mine except it's not all right out remember how i have that oh yeah well there's plate here oh god that just made it worse yeah well it says something but i can't really get it you can tell there's letters on it yeah that's anyways it's too dirty what's uh this way another switch and wow that's a oh and it's a little valve gate valve yeah nice if this thing is extensive what the heck yeah this is this is um more modern workings i think back full drift check out what's down on the right yeah it looks like there's a winds here well this thing keeps going down well it looks like i can see the bottom i don't know unless it turns vertical down there it's hard to say we had two ladders and i'm guessing they had a little probably a little air operated a little air hoist and that faces out yep i don't see any artifacts back there well let's go ahead back to that one junction all right here's this receiver tank and let's go check out this drift what do we got over here check out that beautiful blasting cap tim or there's no caps in it so the writing's pretty clear on it california blasting caps yeah that's cool so do you notice a whole bunch of blocks yeah with the imprint for the the grilles yeah and here's my plate right around the corner here what is this crate here that's cool check this guy out whoa yeah what is that it's a jack leg but it's got this special base let's see if i can lift it oh okay so that's yeah so oh my god yes sir okay here i need to give you a hand if you want to do that no that's not too bad as long as you teeter it up okay so so they'd have a block on the top so that way they can raise it up it's like an extension for it huh well no no this is like a leveling base it blends out the base oh boy smooth work there just like that i've never seen something like that i've never seen anything like this either look at that base for those that don't know this call or there would be a drill mounted on this column here usually they have a arm attachment and then they mount the drill onto that and then they wedge it between the floor and the back and these couplings here these clamps yeah they for the arm they prevent it from sliding down so they get these clamps on and that means that they can swing the the two-man drill and they call them two-man drills because it it they're i have one that i acquired and it's about 190 pounds of cast iron there you need two men when this setup here yep more uh hand steel this is phenomenal i can't even say the words that is awesome oh wow this mine just keeps on giving what the heck it goes away yeah dude and it also goes up a little fair a little bit too this is crazy oh so this is a skid plate huh for the switch that's half of this yeah half of it so our four-way intersection check it out worn down it is they they use the hell out of that i'm looking here i thought it was a blasting cap but it's an old pencil huh and it's got uh looks like thp in it or ihp for the initials and a couple of bite marks the miners are using this that's really cool yeah thp here's a trapdoor this is crazy i know right who knew all this stuff was down here because of mine the mining ports did not mention this at all this was not an unused message it just said it was a winds didn't mention any workflows an unused ball of twine that's pretty uh it didn't get me excited i was hoping to see a grill right oh here's the other half there there's another piece and there's there's another so i guess they got one and a half is that another carbon rod oh it's just a i don't know if that's a core sample or just a chunk of iron i don't know it's kind of heavy yeah that feels like metal like rusted metal so i think this is where they had the plate you could see the uh all the wood underneath rotted oh yeah there's there's one plate that's still down so there's the plate there's the let's see if i can lift it they probably got moisture stuck underneath it and that brought it out the uh yeah right out the base this goes every direction what the heck does this loop back around yeah this guy does loop back okay check out the uh the scaling bar there yeah and oh yeah this bracelet yeah oh yeah mica grease yeah probably the lid to the one we saw or it's the same type of camera yeah that's really cool yeah scaling bar here wow and there's a few little uh little bippies here and there along this passage lots of uh efflorescence there there was something here i don't know what but it's gone now look here's um some sort of machinery here's a bucket catch and for when there's hinges on that board for a trapdoor yeah so but there's is there no windows back over here okay yeah well that's all that stuff that looks like it's four wins probably came from the one that you threw the rock down because that one looked like everything was removed from it all the setup this is crazy there's so much things down here so many things down here there's a lid to a blasting captain pretty legible yeah nice and then this was on top of it it looks like they stole somebody's curtains see it's got roses in them you can still see the batter oh yeah use whatever is a rag [Music] that's just crazy man hey well this is this the uh mounting for the i'm not sure how that is at first i thought this was the mounting for the sheave wheel for like a head frame or something i was thinking they might have had a like a slusher in here for pulling but that's also very possible they had some sort of machine in here maybe a vent for airflow remember remember the 5th of november we have a file here as well as some graffiti from 19 30 39. yep november 5th all right so i suppose we'll head this way yep okay so here's this junction and we just noticed that right here on the walls there's some uh candle wax and uh some soot from the candle that's pretty neat and uh let's go down this drift apparently this loops back around yeah this this level was really unexpected 1963 36 74. caltech must have been a geologist or something i came in here got some big crate here some sort this was probably for explosives yeah i think explosive storage there's a bunch of wax papers from the dynamite still got sawdust in it does this go anywhere did you shut this that one moves back around okay alrighty and we're back that was an incredible level all right so xavier is heading up and there's a little room over here that the wires run into and apparently there's some interesting things over here yeah and there must have been an electrical panel on that board there and looks like there's some pieces of batteries huh yeah look at the the carbon rod in there so xavier was theorizing that they sent electricity down here to charge the batteries and then they used the batteries for running the lights i don't know i'm not really sure but uh that's his guess and his guess is probably better than mine because he's an electrician okay so uh yeah this was a fantastic level uh those lenses did look really interesting those two wins that we saw but i don't know i have a feeling that they're they don't lead anywhere extensive um considering that there is the reasoning on windlasses but uh i don't know it's hard to say because i was not expecting this level so it's possible we might be back here sometime in the near future to descend those lenses and i'll i'll add that onto the end of this video or possibly it will be its own video i'm not so sure yet but for now let's make the long climb out of here we are well 640 feet deep or into the mine along the the incline of the vein so yeah it's going to be quite a workout to get out of here

Channel: Forgotten Mining History

Views: 162,658

Rating: 4.8706255 out of 5

Keywords: mine, mines, mine exploring, mine exploration, abandoned, abandoned mine, abandoned mines, underground, adit, tunnel, shaft, incline, decline, inclined shaft, mineshaft, exploring, exploration, silver, lead, zinc, silver mine, gold, copper, lead mine, zinc mine, limestone, geology, calcite, ladders, cave, history, historic, mojave, mojave desert

Id: 6fwqDiVNsdY

Length: 52min 31sec (3151 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021