Finding The Lost Silver Spear Mine

[Music] come back up [Music] howdy this week the hunt continues for the silver spear mine the snow is mostly melted the mine shaft is mostly open so what i'm gonna do is grab some rope some supplies get into these mines and show you guys what's inside last week my adventures again to the silver spear the silver spear was apparently one of the larger mines here at cerro gordo and i knew nothing about this mine until christmas this year and at christmas this year i was given this this is a journal from a woman named francis who lived at cerro gordo from 1939 to 1942 and as i was reading through it the mind she kept referencing was something called the silver sphere i've read almost all the books about cerro gordo and there's nothing called the silver spear in the books that i've read i've asked some locals that have a good familiarity with sarah gordo and the decision split half of them think it's one place half of them think it's the other and when i go online it's almost the same thing this is insane i'll come back tomorrow my light and some rope well the plot thickens after discovering those two holes today up by the union i got pretty confident that that was in fact the silver spear some think that it's here however if you think it's the heart camp [Music] there i'd be really interested in this if i take away this wood how deep this goes that there's levels of any type my plan was to gather gear and go explore these things the next day but as what happens living in a ghost town sometimes nature didn't really care about my plans and that night it started dumping snow [Music] but the snow is melted my friend johnny is here just for one day so we're gonna get out there and try to explore right now i'm pretty sure that the hole above the hoist house is possible to get into because it gets quite a bit of sun but the one up above the heart camp may be more difficult and we may not be able to get there today but who knows you know maybe this first one is v1 and there's no second exploration needed i'm getting on my harness gonna get the rope gonna get johnny and we're gonna get up there and see what this potential silver spear is all about johnny you ready to find the silver spear yes enthusiasm [Music] there goes johnny [Music] so [Music] all right and we meet again back let's [Music] you ready for this let's do it i mean that rock right above the hole we're going into just does not look safe looks like it sneeze it's going to send all that rock tumbling down there it looks like half the rocks have already fallen from previous sneezes i believe that things ready to just chop me in half ah the things you just can't think about when you're exploring old mines now he's to figure out where to tie this off to thinking of rocks but this rock does not look like the best option so maybe something further back that way just so this doesn't go anywhere this work oh yeah that works [Music] yep is the rope entangled or no it is yeah can i get these rocks out of the way uh-huh step one complete we are officially into what could be the silver spear some timbering and some crush timbering there and it does appear to go down further so i'm confident in this choice and excited that i've never been in here how you feeling johnny equally excited as you can tell yeah just the enthusiasm in your voice is incredible all right i'm gonna go skiing [Music] all right we are venturing lower into what could be the silver sphere but just like that and that quickly it is not looking good what thought was a tunnel it has a lot of collapse so i'm down underneath where i was just shooting from up here and there's nothing it's just all a bunch of wood some cool rock just don't want to see a bobcat that's all huh hey that's that's it it was up there oh it was up there and that exploration was a bit short-lived it seems that shaft only goes maybe 50 feet down and then it's fully collapsed i think in the past it was a much bigger operation but these days there wasn't too much to explore well that was a quick no we're going somewhere else we got three other options today not much time so i'm trying to get back out of this and go to something that might be it not johnny this guy this place is a bust [Music] and then right next to it there was an additional what appeared to be stoke since we're in this area we're gonna check out this i mean there's some type of cave thing going over there there's some above and then there's one below so we want to go in over that little cave and remember the last time i was up here i was like that kind of looks just like a bobcat cave and now if you look at the snow leading out of that cave what do you have bobcat tracks so it does look like that it's a bobcat den back there but down below us it looks like there's a mine i don't know if i want to meet a bobcat today but can we get in that way [Music] so we can avoid the bobcat johnny says we're gonna avoid the bobcat so let's do it johnny wonder gonna show us how it's done avoid the bobcat get angry at the static rope we need dynamic rope please be careful [Music] come back up johnny went down first i went to a different tunnel to explore and unfortunately we both ran into dead ends and so it seemed like the first area that i thought above the hoist was a big mining operation at some point in time but at this point though all those places are caved in [Music] i think part of this fun part of the experience is just the adventure you know just learning about these places learning where they are and learning where they go or don't go is kind of a win in its own right and so we packed up we started towards past heart camp this is the second potential place that the silver spear could be [Music] so as you can see this as far as the truck's going to make it we're going to hike the rest all the way up and hopefully the silver spear is open what's up oh [Music] [Music] we're almost there folks [Music] when i first got to the shaft right as soon as you get there there's a lot of falling down buildings with timbering and sheet metal and the shaft that we saw looked like it went pretty far down so there's a debate you know i wanted to clear off the hole of all the wood and scrap metal so that way it was a clear descent johnny was of the opinion that if we removed all that stuff it could make more stuff cave in and because the sun was going down and we had this time limit on our exploration i went with that and i was like all right fine i'll leave you the stuff i went first this time and i had to squeeze this tiny little gap in between the side of the shaft and this former roof part that was just laying there and i'm not claustrophobic by nature but i don't know if anybody loves being crunched in a tiny little space there we go ya on the flip side as they say well guys snuck through that little hole got excited i'm dangling here and if you dangle further it's not looking good got a big old collapse and i got snow falling on me but i'm gonna go down there make sure of it drop me a coin i catch it or i don't it stays there forever coin goes down there forever all right time to go deeper [Music] doesn't it look like it almost goes back and wraps around there i mean entrance is way up there where we were china's kicking down snow but there's obviously a shaft here so if there was ever a hoist house here it feels like this would be it this is a pretty vertical straight and there's timbering here even hand hewn pretty old stuff there's square nails so all the contacts glues are here that it goes deeper but either it's all collapsed and it actually is collapsed or the snow this is blocking the entrance which is through here or straight down but i can't get there because of the snow that was also a dead end as far as mine exploration that one appeared like it was a main shaft you know there's all the equipment there's even like backup air supplies and like ventilation things everywhere but the combination of the snow and the wood and the sheet metal just made it impossible to get into that shaft you know i'm not going to fully write it off i still think there's a chance that you could get past the timbering if there wasn't snow packed in as well but this week i wasn't able to get in so then you have to get out and getting out with something that i punted down the road for the future my new jacket so oh no stop give me your hand give me your hand i need to get this thing up give me your hands i'll get this up oh that off yeah there's one of those weird spaces where i could get my head out but i couldn't get around and you have to remember below me is just a straight vertical shaft but as i got towards the top there's a timber going across and it must have been structured at one point so i was kind of able to stand on the timbering while trying to push my head up and then i asked johnny to try to help move this piece of roof that was above me and that was a disaster as i started moving this stuff first snow fell so i felt like the roof was falling and then the timbering that i was standing on just gave way i kind of just went like that and as i gave way the sheet metal roof tilted a little bit and it's dumped a bunch of snow which i interpreted as the actual ceiling falling on me i remember just telling johnny you'd have to get this thing off me because my fear was that you know this is a loose panel of the roof and if it just even clipped my jacket it could pull me back down fall on my head or seriously injure me luckily i was able to get out i sweeped my way out i was a little bit shaking i would say i wasn't able to explore deep in that mine but that's okay for me my main determinant of success or failure this week was just being able to get into these things you know i i discovered it not that long ago i found where i thought it could be and now i can say that hey i gave it a shot i went in there you know it wasn't what i would hope the outcome would be but it was still an outcome so i'm happy that for my mental kind of checklist it's another one checked off the list all right well a lot warmer today than it was the last couple days sun's out snow should be melting i'm headed back up to the trail to get to the heart camp mine the one that potentially could be the silver spear johnny and i explored it the other day wasn't anything down in the shaft there's a lot more buildings out there that we didn't have time to explore so i'm headed back up looks like i should be able to get most of the way there this time without having to hike because the snow's melting off the road i'm on a road now that has a gate on it and only me and the faa have a key to it and the faa only comes up maybe once a year so not very trafficked so obviously if there's a snow drift it'd stay in there but looks like a lot of them have melted as you can see the view out of this is something else oh yeah back once again hiking out to the mine today i'm gonna try to see if i can find any remnants of a home or a cabin or anything that wasn't mining related the more i think about it the more there's a good chance that this is the silver spear so my hope is that i can find more connections to the stories in that journal you know i sit out here and it's just absolutely beautiful and even more remote than sarah proper and i think you know even how difficult life must have been up here you know in 1940 when francis was living here and writing about it yet at the end she still wish he could have stayed you know so it just speaks to sarah gordon i think just something about this town keeps people going even with the difficulties and i'm included you know i don't have running water but you know i can't get these views anywhere else in the world so take the good and the bad and luckily the good to me outweighs any bad we could have [Music] [Music] so this is the shaft i went down into and looking at it now makes me even more nervous when i was in it the other day because this thing is just loose this is what was scaring me because it could have just fallen straight on me and the snow off of it did fall onto me and what you probably couldn't see in the video is right there there's a timber and i was resting my feet on the timber and simultaneously the timber broke so it's just hanging by the rope and then this loosened and some of the snow fell on me so i thought this whole thing was falling i was just going to rip me down to the bottom of it and it wasn't my best time and we kind of called it a day after that but if you look there's more structure over there and there's a lot of structure down below me right in that cliff kind of where the shadow just is hitting right now [Music] so there was definitely a second area to this you can see up there where that scrap is where my tripod camera is so up there was the shaft i went into way down here if you look you'll see a ton of building material and what i think is a cliff so i'm going to be very careful but there's even pipe down there so there might have been more lining operation down here so i am going to scurry over there and look at that but first let's examine if i am in fact on a cliff as you may know i hate heights but let's take a look oh yeah that is as clippy as it gets [Music] you guys want to see there's the ground so we're not going to walk any further over that way all right let's go see what this other structure is all about you do not want to slip and slide right here because it would appear you would toboggan right down a cliff like those pieces of snow are like watch so i am going to avoid sliding to my death today and get over here oh it's so steep all right let's get over there we got some nice planks oh shoot stood right on wood almost slip and slid down there after all all right look at this tree what a beautiful thing yeah this is a big structure i don't know if it's a home necessarily or part of the mining shaft operation above because i imagine if the shaft i was in was significant this could have been a horizontal coming out of the shaft i mean the more i look around here there's just so much more structure here than there was above the hoist house that seems like it only makes this would be the silver spear also given the fact that francis said that she had to walk aways this is definitely further away than i love the hoist view hasn't changed any while i was up there exploring these cabins that have just been lost to time with snow laying all over them i just kept envisioning francis's life up there you know how difficult it must have been back then she talks about 12-foot drifts in her journal and i don't think i found drifts even one-tenth of that but it was still just difficult to get around and putting myself in that mentality just gave me a better appreciation for all the people that have been here before me including heart you know percy hart has mentioned a lot in francis's journal as the main mine owner at that time so when i got back i decided to research him a lot more and he is a extremely interesting character in his own right he's just one of these guys that was obsessed with this place it seemed to just consume it you know he seemed very excited about the mining claims things are about to happen yet things weren't quite going as he planned you know there's an entry in here from 1940 when he was offered 750 000 for the mine and the only word after that is refused but then three days later it says heart is late on wages again so there's this guy that just saw serogoro to be something bigger he knew that there's more here that it could become something more than it currently was but he's never had the resources to do that there's letters in here about him always trying to get investors always being a little bit way late on wages yet always being excited for things going on up here and i think you see that a lot and all the owners here in the end it literally or figuratively destroys a lot of these people and it's hard not to see some of that myself you know i think since coming up here it's been enchanted over the place and it just consumes all of my resources as far as time and money and everything just trying to see this place become more than it currently is but in this town's wake these people that weren't quite as successful as myself even the knowledge of that doesn't dissuade me from what i'm doing i think i'm too far under its spell to go back but it does make you wonder some days you know do i own the town or does the town own me i don't know i can't help but wonder what drove hart or even francis and stanley to keep going so i wonder if they had appreciation for history or if it was just financial but i can't imagine it was just financial because there's better ways to make money so there must have been some appreciation of her history i know in the journal on one day francis said that she went to an old indian campground to collect artifacts so i think that's a big part of cerro gordo even since 1940 you know to me that seems like a distant past but for them that was the present and so i wonder if one day people will be looking around searching for treasures from the 2020. but for now i love doing explorations like this to help me connect me to something bigger you know it helps you remember that there's people here before you there's gonna be people here after me and it just helps me to feel connected to something to connect to all humans you know we are all connected if you zoom out far enough the world is one place and this helps remind me of that and appreciate everybody in it so i appreciate you guys checking out this video next week i'm taking a detour i'm getting into a lot of building restoration i'm sticking out of the mines for a while because over the last two weeks i've taken two big field trips to help cerro gordo i went to darwin which is another big mine in the area to try to get wood for the cabins i'm building the wood there is a period from 1870 so it would match perfectly and there's a huge history there and i went to panama springs another big mining area to potentially solve the concrete issue that we have i can't wait to show you guys more until then i'm signing out i hope you guys have a great week i hope to see you here next week [Music] you

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 804,936

Keywords: abandoned ghost town, alone in my ghost town, brent underwood, cerro gordo, cerro gordo ghost town, ghost town, ghost town living, i bought a ghost town, living in a ghost town, lost silver, mine, silver mine, silver spear, silver spear mine

Id: ATiCS7do60A

Length: 30min 9sec (1809 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021