Cerro Gordo Ghost Town

Oh hi I'm Tom I'm joy we're the right leaders and today we are in California desert Mojave nope no Sarah Gordo ghost town known Pine area Owens Lake to the mine no ghost town [Music] [Applause] [Music] they had a problem with the first set of mules you see that smelting chimney over there well there was two of them near that spot and what were they melting up here was it led led or led this was not a silver mine this was a lead silver mined silver was a byproduct well it's 24-hour operation as such from those two furnaces burning 24 hours a day settled on the brush the first set of meals were loud to free grains in a big arena well they chopped in the brush well guess what happened the first set of mules that poisoning so that just so they decided they needed to build that mule barn keep the meals and stalls but the hay in the upper a frame of the meal barn and keep it covered with canvas and that solved the problem also in 1880 William Chow Fant speech given me 1870 William shelf M had the newspaper independence he sent an article up here do not melt and drink the snow no water I cannot use rain water up here because the dust that blows off that leg is not arsenic in it we doing all this stuff because like I said when I was here was pretty bad oh the hotel was terrible bunkhouse didn't have any doors and windows yeah these were broken those were broken you're right yeah most of the windows were broken up here vandalism I'd still there's not enough or for a commercial no no I mean can you will feel oh no no it's caved in all the major drifts are caved in except the Estelle halfway up that was still good the Sun set you could go in and this melting area was there and then the pit shaft was eleven hundred and seventy five foot straight down with seven levels yeah now that Josh mehandi hoist is working Jody got it working again and we were supposed to go down at this weekend to our last weekend to do the water pump but I screwed up you guys a pump water overdue no we haven't pumped water in 10 years and the problem is Annenberg foundation brought us a pump but I said it was the wrong one because I read the wrong label on it so that ruined the job I still catch him flack oh well the first night this was done Bobcat using for a cat box and all this stuff sprinkled all over here and it was a big ugly here's what happens if you get you or bubbling too much it's like molten lava and it destroys the bottom of your furnace so that's not nice not nice at all hopper in your Smith Spurrier yes Smith tonight zinc with LED sulfide zinc sulfate and copper you know copper sulfate stupor copper sulfate spit into sewer pipes to keep the roots in really well in 1872 the Union came up here Mining Union they wanted to switch it to an eight-hour shift for the same pace of 12-hour shift they all Shaw said no get off get off the mountain well 1874 Darwin came to existence eight hours for the same page 12 hours so many of the miners took their cabins apart for the wood because there wasn't any wood down south and they moved to Darwin really smart move that was having its Thanksgiving dinner so is this a claim still really well there's five hundred acres of private and five hundred acres of claim to it's good yeah I didn't have a mouse in here that's Rob this is Tim buck 5c tube up to the middle of nowhere we're past the middle of our last winter 11 foot snow drifts here for weeks somebody living in here [Applause] I'm just buried the same by the museum's Wow my self that didn't happen now our crucibles just happened to come from the battle she works off the tenements imported from Swansea Wales that's where Swansea got its name they didn't make those on the west coast the 1860s you find those up here oh yes there's thousands of those I'll tell you why every load or that was shipped from here to San Francisco it was assayed for it's an approximate value so that when you sent it to this refinery with a certificate you knew about how much you were going to get back because the refinery where you could say that's all that it's not worth anything but this stuff was running 30 to 60 ounce of silver per tonne and they were shipping down 8 to 12 tons a day of the lead and silver product and each ingot was worth about $30 so if you weren't on top of things what would happen would you get you ever heard of stock market or stock certificate manipulation some companies would put a mine on paper that never existed sell you stock at $10 a share that the next year they'd say oh we have to have an assessment of $4 per share for improvements on the mine not even a mine yeah this is uh this is 1872 building but then during the different eras in 1916 they brought in electricity as a 1917 Lincoln Electric lamp maybe heard of Lincoln welders same company thank you how do you make seven gasps any idea ever heard of a miners carbide lamp you drop water and calcium carbide acetylene captaincies yes I was a schoolteacher I also teach a little bit of metallurgy and things like that this there's human blood in here world war two the Warren Act of 1940 tooth blows all non-essential mining well this mine had three strategic metals zinc copper led so they hydrated out of here till 1947 and of course scavenge metals out of here and a lot of the guys occasionally if you ran over your foot with a thousand-pound work cart you got a problem some of the guys that were handling the or buckets on the cable had their hand on as the pulley went through or ever been kicked by a 800 pound mule yeah that'll put a dent in your leg sometimes a drill would have a problem or just traveling this terrain is repairing the sand in front of the museum before they even had the deck on there and I thought I was gonna lift it up here but that India but the war act closed all nonsense remaining in this pocket the post this is left over today world war two never seen tongue depressors in size now borax which was found in Death Valley and used for a soap was also the flux and treatment for doing or reclining it's also a medicine it's an insecticide it's used in paints and it's used in ceramics what a wonderful material who invented scuba self-contained underwater breathing apparatus a French guy who had a boat named Eclipse and John Denver wrote a song about it John Jacques Cousteau well either and if you're in a mining you saw this guy walking towards you you better drop everything and run right now get out of there but they discovered the rebreather ahead of the problem you keep Reed breathing your air the temperature of the air goes up every time it goes back through your body what's normal body temperature yes but anyway so they kept the same mass but went to the couple of tanks instead of the rebreathing stuff with the cart oxide chemical I saw him walking at me I'd be in big oh goody and there's the player now unfortunately this winter the wind was so bad and shook this building knocked that picture off the wall right above there and crashed through here and damaged this thing I was very upset where they do have a bar over here [Applause] we store it once in 1962 this stove is special for a reason you look at the back of it you want a picture of it we're not like Cody we can remove the sign but there's something special in the back of the stove that makes it more valuable than just a regular old horror stove so this this was appraised in about ten to twelve thousand dollars Wow that's isinglass mica and what is this material what do you think this is up here can't be silver because silver just turns black when it gets hot and oxidizes can't be chrome because chrome turns blue so what's the five cent piece made out of nickel nickel nickel plating yes it's a jewel that kind of resident that up here back now this was the second year this is 1886 the first one was right with your foot is it rotted out for walk went through started that war on fire you so they've got smart the second time and did a hearth this is an 1886 yeah that's where I made it stands it just happens to be the same brand is the cash register national machine in their national so it's a and that's Lewis and Clea Gordon the fancy house that's not if you are only seven or eight fingers how would you come count to ten you know you don't have ten a lot of miners lost a finger or two who's ever heard of the term double jacking you're holding a three-foot-tall drill bit I've got a 12 pound sledge hammer well in reenactment reenactment yeah okay we hit that bit he turns in a corner bit turn the corner but usually you're going vertical now what happens if he sneezes right as I'm coming down with that hammer and hoots his hand an inch or two in Oh blammo right now oh well and a lot of other miners the blaster guys it crimped the blasting cap a hair too long blow off two fingers so if you're a card player you'd have trouble with these cars now they don't have numbers take your shoes off yeah Joe hey George hold up your one hand and he put his other hand this is douglas-fir clear drain Casey tongue-and-groove and it came from Cottonwood Canyon across the way the original stone giant powder company anybody ever heard of Alfred Nobel Peace Prize he invented dynamite in the 1860s and Bell Shahs partner and jetsam met him in San Francisco and in 1868 and got the patent right this is the original kitchen from the hotel it was being used just a few years ago as a working kitchen this is original stove from the hotel which was being used this is the bunkhouse which was being redone everything's still in place people are still staying there once in a while as you can see it's a beam used microwaves and beds in every room so it's all set up for each room is it like a little bedroom probably not lady was here nobody knew if it's an original bunkhouse here so the miner stayed here instead of their own places do I look like inside there it is right here hi the mind that's what looked like inside where's the cemetery much fine laughs good night malachite so excited I mean it's the completely different ders like what do you think there's like 20 buildings here now now there's five 50 or 60 that's where they care take your lives cell tower somebody lived in that house a few of these foundations that are missing houses now this other side goes into what Selene Valley the climb he's building a lot of it I can look nice okay all the old buildings that were here last time I was here 35 years ago gone we doing a lot of snow up here yourself wait for him taking care of the place drive up here is how I overjoy 9000 in 1987 Jody Stewart I had plans on turning Cerro Gordo into a bed-and-breakfast and she was working on it all the time until her death in 2001 and they're still working on making it a keeping it going everything going there see you later see you down the road oh yeah make sure you subscribe give us a thumbs up whatever but anything's appreciate it we'll see you on down the road Thanks hey this is matchstick art me with matchsticks we cool [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Rightlaners

Views: 52,107

Keywords: cerro gordo, cerro gordo ghost town, tour of cerro gordo, ghost town, rightlaners, tom and joy, full time rvers, rv nomads, tour of mining town, mining town, lone pine, death valley, owens valley, lone pine california, full time rv travels, rving lifestyle, cerro gordo mining town, ghost mine

Id: tt536ExcOmY

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2017