Exploring the Mining Ghost Town of Atolia

hey guys west of mine detective here coming at you with another ghost town and mine exploring video so right now I'm at this ghost town that I've been to I believe three or four times prior I've only showed it I think in two videos I'll leave a link to that in the top right but I don't think I've ever showed a lot of the outside infrastructure I've showed the head frames um at least a lot of them and also the orbins but I've never showed like the buildings and such that are surrounding this area so right now I'm coming upon this old looking house you can see that it's white but uh yeah since it's uh pretty much right next to the highway it's come into a little bit of disrepair well that's cool got a piece of purple glass always loved seeing this amethyst colored glass that's a nice indication that you're in an old area damn look at that it's a roof coming in right there thank you got a couple couches right here got one hell of a tattered mattress but yeah a little bit of history on this uh mining Ghost Town so it was founded back in 1904 or 1905 and the main commodity that came out of here was tungsten which they used extensively back in World War one and World War II it was a very very important commodity there's another collapse structure yeah you could hear the cars passing by and there's some graffiti which is very unfortunate but the further you go off off the side of the road off into that direction there's another base to one of these houses yeah this is uh one of the cooler head frames out here definitely more modern I would say it probably dates to the 60s or so maybe the 50s but yeah nice yellow Metal Head frame up there you can actually see there's a light sheave wheel cable all that still intact and I even got the Chute right here or the ore would have dumped out of right into this Direction so look from right here all right let's take a look down into the shaft so this is super damn sketchy because you can see that that has eroded away as well as right here but there's concrete right here so I'm gonna walk over that and as you can see got a wooden ladder right here off to the left but uh yeah this shaft it's pretty much 99 plugged up look up at the head frame and I'll be headed off that way showing some more of this pretty cool outside infrastructure all right guys so you already know me I'm the west of mine detective and I took a little look down here scouted this out and I've seen that there's a Tire in the way but all I had to do was move it aside and if you look down here now turn my light on there is a pretty decent Gap in between that ladder and that bunch of debris that ventilation pipe and all that and then uh what's interesting about this particular shaft is a presence of a cage which is pretty much like an elevator that the monitors and the the tools would have went down into the shaft with there would have been a probably metal mesh right here as a platform and uh there's still remnants of the cable also a roller right here so yeah I'll put you guys on my helmet and hopefully there's a working level or two down there that's not collapsed and we could explore it all right so let's start heading down there right here you can see the version that has taken place right here off to the left and then right behind me that is a lot of soil that has come off of there so yeah the ground is definitely not the best I'm gonna be very careful right here I'm gonna most of the time I'm gonna use the back of this ladder as support instead of the rungs I uh I don't really trust these at least these top ones but yeah here is the first little obstacle good thing that I'm skinny because uh yeah if I was any bigger I would uh probably not fit through here foreign 96 degrees up top and it honestly doesn't even feel that much different down here hopefully further down we go more airflow we got and all that oh yeah this is sketchy so look at that ventilation pipe that goes all the way up yeah honestly I think this is gonna be more scary filling up but uh looks like I cleared most of it oh my God look at that that goes down like I can't even see the bottom damn it goes down a good 150 feet at least oh man was not expecting that I was thinking maybe just like a hundred feet already I went down a good 20 feet oh man oh look at this shaft this thing is big honestly I was not even expecting to do any exploring like this so I didn't even bring any gloves which might have been a mistake this is this is awesome kind of sketched out right now this ladder is pretty pretty stable but I don't know I don't trust it maybe it's because I'm alone I don't know all right well I'll uh turn you guys back on hopefully I get to the first level which is and I don't know how many feet all right guys there's looking up the shaft I probably went down a good I'd say maybe 75 feet or so and I made it to this first level it's only got this uh left hand drift and then is looking further down the shaft that goes again let's turn this thing on Turbo might be plugged up but we'll go down there maybe see how it looks and then right over this direction actually got an old telephone dating to the 60s or so just hang in there from the cord phone itself is broken careful right here for some reason this uh that's mine sketches the hell out of me especially this vertical shaft but here's a little paintbrush there's an old uh blouse the brand is Arrow made in USA is that say s San frized sand fries whoa I think it might have a date on it what's this something 15 Tech 36 right there yeah still got the cool little white plastic buttons on there four hole it's pretty much all there that's cool I'm guessing also dating to the same era 50s 60s a couple boxes right here probably cardboard Dynamite boxes here's a little wall where they're probably hung their clothes and their helmets with these nails and then right here I actually got a an intact light bulb wow that's cool to see probably been hanging there for 60 years or so all right let's cross over this again oh I got a bottle cap right here is a pure Purex brand bleach bottle cap here's a cardboard Dynamite box oh looks like uh that's a Dupont brand one look at the colors pop on that there's another Dynamite box got a few of them up here that's writing on this I was just talking about probably to avoid accidents blah blah blah it says hoist men right there probably instructions on uh raising and lowering the Hoist well even got some core samples yes I drilled these out uh the ribs in the back and the face of mine and all that got a few of them actually right here up against the rib Salem brand cigarette case lots of decently interesting stuff oh look at this that is a suspender clip that looks substantially older or this whole thing like substantially older than the rest of stuff you can see so this is like a suspenders that's dope just look at that I guess this probably dates to the maybe the 30s 40s I think it's older than all that other stuff I've been finding but who knows that's just cool I still got one of my straps we got a walkie-talkie from previous explorers a little workbench area some more Nails on this board want more Nails on this one all this stuff is way more modern pressed down antifreeze cool I thought it was light hangers lots of cool stuff you just look at the floor and find all this cool stuff and this looks like that just ends got this little Dugout area and that's the face of this level don't see anything else of Interest really yeah this is probably where they're taking all the core samples out of drill hole right there another one there wow and a big pipe right there in the middle all right so uh we'll see if we uh can continue down that shaft and see if there's any more levels all right so there's looking back up this vertical shaft there's the sunlight and uh probably went down about 150 feet and this is a very anti-climactic end to this mine as you can see lattice stop right here A bunch of messed up rungs along the way along here too but as you can see this just Peters out right here which is very unfortunate um yeah it kind of sucks I don't even see any like animal skeletons or anything I might I think I see one bone down there but I'm not even go I'm gonna go down there to investigate that because it's not even worth it yeah you could tell this is definitely not a collapse because literally the ladder's end right here but uh I'm probably about 150 feet into here I'm gonna go back to the surface check out some of the other structures and uh yeah call it today all right guys just got out of that vertical shaft and uh enjoying the last race of sunlight upon the Mojave Desert right now still got a lot to explore but uh how do I cut the video short I'll check out this little cool structure maybe the assay office maybe that one but we'll start from here and go on that way right now I'm standing on a pretty substantial waist rock pile look at how much this is stacked up wow yeah like I said I'll go check out this one and the one by Beyond it and then give you that at the office but it's so awesome out here with all these head frames orbins there's one right there one right there I explore that one probably about three years ago but yeah let's get over there so here's a quick little overview on this small out building on the back side you can see that there's remnants of a telegraph or telephone pole and there's still one lone Brown porcelain insulator that's pretty cool so let's go check out the inside I don't think there's anything much in here but mm-hmm yeah this place is pretty pretty torn up there's literally nothing left in here but the structure itself is pretty structurally intact so that's good to see and then let's go check out this one really quick and then we could go check out that assay office and I think that'll be at the end of this one this one looks pretty cool let's figure out what this one was used for lots of trash on the outside and graffiti hate to see that but that's just the reality of some of these places especially if they're really easy to get to there's there's a cool little work table areas for storage and all that yes place is picked clean there's literally nothing left in here there's a door well I guess we got some screen left on this window I'm gonna show the glass right here oh this looks like a top of one of those ovens or something that they used in that in the assay offices they would have had like these ovens and probably would have been situated right here and then there would have been like event it goes up to there huh I believe they were used to smelt The Ore down yeah other than that it really nothing left of this one which is a shame look out here yeah let's go head over to the uh what I believe is the main assay office straight ahead so here's an outside view of what I believe is the essay office and this uh Ghost Town I just love the construction style this one really nice and squared off and he got that on the top let's see construction like that nowadays and it's very very fortunate to see that it's still all here considering it's made pretty much all of wood hasn't been burned down like some other places have been yeah it's going this way and here are these uh refining ovens there's two of them that I was talking about previously I was thinking that there was one in the other building yeah still got the smokestacks or whatever you want to call them and go up and out of the building and then the ovens themselves are pretty much intact still there other than you know modern graffiti then we got a little bench right here I would have worked on I'm sure see if there's anything else of Interest just a shame how much uh how much vandalism has gone on in here it was like this last time I was here but yeah it just sucks to see there's nothing in this room there's a concrete two concrete uh tables right here I honestly don't remember seeing that the last time but that was quite a few years ago so and yeah let's head out this way and uh yeah I think I'll leave you guys on that note um wish I could Explore More but gotta get back lots of driving to do but uh leave you guys with this view of Red Mountain and those two pretty cool uh wooden head frames and bins so I hope you guys enjoyed this video please like And subscribe thank you for watching

Channel: Western Mine Detective

Views: 8,479

Keywords: #mineexploring, #abandonedmines, #ghosttown

Id: o0dUihzgYDY

Length: 23min 27sec (1407 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023