Girard Mine: Time Capsule Of A Mine Beneath Tombstone, Arizona - Part 1

we are in tombstone arizona that's the town of tombstone right there got the gerard mine right in front of me which we're just about to enter i want to show you a couple interesting artifacts up here scattered on the hillside you can see the old bottle tops and things like that it's tobacco tin back there good stuff and then the mine again this is an old stove or enter the mine in view of the surrounding desert all right let's get in there andrew dropping down into the gerard mine here as you see it's a little bit of a crawl well the funny thing is i cleared a bunch of material out of here used to be a belly crawl nice gotta love those belly crawls i'm gonna need both hands for this one so i'll turn the camera off and pick up when i can start filming again we just slid in from there already getting down at some stops here as you can see that stuff running off different directions and feel some decent airflow you see we're just for twisting our way down oh glad you got that light that's a good little stove yeah nice and colorful a pillar right there we came back through that area interesting yeah it's fascinating i was kind of picking up on that you can see it better from here though that's the top of one of the anticlines here that's really interesting yeah i've never seen one like that before a shape like that we have quite a few here they're like that that nice arch tool essentially each area you know the mining techniques can be similar but each one is still unique just because the geology is unique to the area this is this is a neat section here because you actually had an ore body and then you had an ore body and sandwiched in between it was just barren rock that's really neat and they they left what looks honestly like an eggshell yeah when they excavated it out left stalls holding it up yeah that's fascinating and these check out these stalls they're raw timber with the bark still on them i love those yeah i don't know if there's a technical name for that or they just have that unmilled wood in there but i don't know i think they're really cool looking yeah all of them are like that in here they're basically just tree trunks that are cut and cut and fit good stuff we'll keep dropping down this way yeah salsa here are all native pine native pines i like it nice gobbing on the left here and on the right a little room created by the goblin there this is pretty wild yeah let's use these to have to go through here but that's a no-go now before we go around so we can get around that mess by going through here we just came in through there to avoid having to crawl through that and a little sub level here he said this is a 50 foot level yeah 50 foot level you can see the old muck sheet right there and then that you said there was a shaft there that's all caved in filled huh interesting yeah this mine was it was done a lot of the same way that all these mines here were done they were done in short little sub levels and then hand haulage right they see upper levels this mine were and that's where we're headed next angie's dropping on these uh back of these stoops i don't even tell on the camera not we're just kind of corkscrewing down lower levels another sub level yeah going off this way huh everything's spaced really close yeah i can tell at least until 100 feet and then it starts to spread out more or what we're used to right drop down the ladder here that's the ladder we just dropped down right there there's a featureless drift running back that way but i noticed when i was peeking down there an old pair of shoes right here which is pretty cool definitely older mines got a nice stop dropping down here looks like oh yeah that's pretty spacious got a pillar here in front of me and this that's where i assume you'd get down to that stop and we've got a drift level running off that way let's go cool this is all fault gouge that we're in right now are you geologists in the audience looks like some old strap rail right there oh nice little stoke chamber right there this is dark dark rock isn't it well this is actually soot oh it's okay um there was a fire in this section of the mine in the 40s oh this is all slipped from that fire wow some more uh strap rail yeah that's more strap rail right there here's where that dike crosses through so these drifts are pretty cramped it's hard to imagine the guys lugging those big stacks full of oh yeah war through here yeah well they actually did have the there's a bunch of strap rail stashed there they did have strap rail all throughout this okay but they're still tight and hard to move yeah heard some pigeons yep pigeons we just came from there drifting around that way and then we've just tied into another mine here called the tough nut those cracks in the rock yeah wow and this uh i'm assuming this runs to the surface yes center the surface is 100 feet up that 100 feet up is a surface that way and then that looks like it drops down away yeah 150 feet there this morning i'd want to fall down yeah not a good thing and then that's not it because we got stuff running off that way too some strap rail buried right there yeah we just hiked in from that direction still on the 100 level of the tough nut and you can see we've come across a fairly large stop chamber drops down you said this way drops down to the 200 yeah if you go around the corner of this pillar it'll take you to the 200 level okay and this one oh wow that drops down quite a way yeah look at that getting lit up with a big boy light nice that's impressive and uh i'll go down there's a second i noticed a tobacco tin right here uh there's a view of that tobacco tin and then looking down here yeah there's a better view of those workings across the way i haven't been down here at all huh i haven't we need to come in and anchor and repel it but i haven't been down this section at all i've been up through there that leads up into a really extensive sub-level a lot of small artifacts up there too virgin mine exploring territory down there plenty of virgin hollow place down here yep and that's to the 200 down there okay so cool we're just shooting down there come up past that tobacco 10 again and andrew noticed some burlap here everybody's talking about the burlap sacks the miners would be holding the war out in there's some right there all right we're picking up on that large dope chamber we dropped down into from that ladder there originally we just did a little detour down here now we're gonna start winding our way down see what's down here yeah that's pretty large there's that little hole right there yeah that's actually that that dike running through here they still ah as we were looking down from before got some muck sheets right there ah it's a nice little pit right there this is one of the lenses to the uh that drops down to 200. yeah it goes down away and this keeps running back there as well we'll make our way over there it's a long stop yeah it's unusual shape for a stoop yeah it's almost like a tube yeah that's a kind of word i was looking for around 800 feet long 800 feet long is impressive it pinches and widens down multiple times like right through here it pinches again and then it widens up right after this real big it's nice to hear those stoles right there yeah yeah this is a long long stop i'm coming in way back there more burlap on the ground right there cool gary very careful on this uh ledge here good view stop here and then just plunges down there that's impressive i like all these pillars in here yeah looks cool it seems to be the most common method here supporting the back and the stops was uh leaving pillars in place so this would be pretty effective from what i've seen of the old mines are still standing when they left those pillars in they're usually intact look at this this is a 30 foot spread here but this this back is still very very very strong yeah everything you see on the floor here was all backfilled none of its fall okay [Applause] this shot a bunch of stoles we were looking down through there a minute ago i keep going over here some more stalls down there this is another antique line that comes in here oh can you see it better from down there yeah you can actually see the radius on it if you look at the stalls it looks almost like wagon oh yeah and that that that spot when we were on the 100 level that it said came down here it comes across there oh okay this is that stop actually does a big corkscrew and comes right in here huh and it's it looks like a loop interesting yeah yeah that's actually a sub level up in here too they gobbed up and it goes back in their ways okay so yeah if we would have gone down that stop off the 100 level would hit this yeah you come right up on this ledge which i mean it's it's pretty nasty climb up this is a 30-foot hole underneath it but you can scale across that ledge and get out here huh good to have options that's another way out if we happen to not be able to get up to where we came down yeah like i said always good to have options there's a few places in here where you can find multiple exits yeah i'll bet hey the redundancy there is really good see it keeps running ahead that's to the bottom just been wrapping our way down continuing this way old v8 can that's older than one i've ever seen so maybe some of the audience will know how old that is but that's an old one for sure we just twisted our way down through there came down this ladder and are now on the dryer to 200 see our stuff running off that way these timbers here and then stuff right off this way as well go check this out nice breeze down here i like that yeah this is the boundary between the gerard and tuffnut right here okay so they actually punched through the stove and came up and there's roughly a six foot difference between the two levels that running off down there is the 200 level the tough nut down that way yeah that's impressive how they're able to be so precise underground with the tools and technology of the time if you look up right here you can see our wagon little stalls that are right above us i like to get down there and see that yeah we're looking up there before and if you remember those wagon wheel stoles that's what we were seeing before so we're underneath those now holding back a lot of rock right there and we're going to keep dropping down this way ah see some dots right there they would track the work our loads with those dots sometimes one dot represent one load sometimes in ten i've heard some lines already even represents a hundred which is a lot got great stove action here it's all still in here jeez how far up is that running about nine feet man what a shot that's great yeah you still got your stalls on the other side here but there's there's still work platforms all over these cells wow right there oh yeah yeah you're right there we go see he's talking about the platforms and myers when you used to get around and work off of usually those have rotted out or caved so it's really interesting to see that it's nice here in arizona everything's dry honestly yeah wow that's really neat i got some track right there drifting off that way with some track let's go this way and then just to reorient you came in from that way so yeah let's go check this out coming down the strip where the track is oh strap rail 1880s nice see you guys are regular viewers of mine usually see this when the wood's all rotted out so you or it's under water so you rarely get a good view of it but you can see really clearly here i've got those boards down roughly two by four size and got those straps on top so nice to see an example of it that's easily viewed there's a repair they did in later years huh yeah like you said it transitioned over to more conventional rail and then jump back on the strap rail looks like we lost our rail sort of lost it during world war ii did they hit the uh underground sections as well for the rail and such yeah okay is there a turn around here at one point yeah it's like sheep yeah this is awesome there's a junction here stuff going off that way straight and behind them right there there's intact railing all three of these drips that's really cool oh that's a great scene how photogenic is that yeah i love that kind of stuff like there's a fire down here too now yeah the entire entire mine burn in this section all the way down to 400 500 feet so all that just i mean some of it's really thick on this stuff oh geez yeah it's almost like uh over the years of the moisture getting into it it's turned into a like a crust yes i see it's mixing with the dust and such that's wild huh it's got good echo still yep lots of bits and pieces of stuff down here ah old box of uh lucky strikes i like it yeah it is black in here this is crazy yeah this is the bottom of one of the lenses that's up in that stop on the 100. what a shot that's really cool that was a job coming down this one yeah or getting stuff up it too yeah how'd they do that this i don't know if they were hauling up this or not oh it's hard to tell could have just been for access yeah i mean at some point they probably were hauling buckets up this but all that infrastructure has been torn out yeah that makes sense geez that's the dead end of the collapse back there okay he said it's a dead end and a collapse back there if you hear that a little mini pillar right here yep that's cool good stuff we've been coming in that way for a while and i've gotten to the shaft that we saw earlier this is the 200 level of the shaft if you remember earlier we were looking up that way up at the 100 a bunch of pigeons down here there's feathers and pigeon feces all over the place but yeah they like to nest in the vertical shafts which is interesting it's hard to imagine i'm doing that in the dark but they do pretty successfully there's one there a bunch of pigeons scattered about farther down and then that's that's not the bottom of the shaft that's a plug that's in the shaft we're in the 200 now and it's thought that this dropped down to the 500 but you estimate that's 30 40 feet thick andrew yeah probably at least yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't want to go dancing on that but you also wouldn't get through it so yeah interesting tough to imagine those guys dropping up and down this all the time yeah it looks like a fairly primitive shaft but yeah they had uh two cages running in this with the ladder in many ways interesting and it's all the infrastructure is gone so it's interesting to see it in its raw state like this interesting oh pigeons flying around starting at that on video you can hear them probably in the video yeah pigeons see all the feathers on the ground it's there's a drift running off this way doesn't look like it goes anywhere it does actually oh does it yeah that one actually goes out about close to a thousand feet no no kidding and there's stops side drifts access to lower areas and all over the place out there along with um access to some sub-level stops and a couple of buried inclines that go to the surface wow see that's why you should never assume anything in the underground mines guys exactly as i drift i made the mistake an assumption about we're gonna be checking this one out nothing else this one's easier to get down from the looks of it ah a little drift right there and oh some good infrastructure overhead see they've uh they're helping support that with that strap right there i don't know how much more than likely old strap rail too yeah you can see an idea of how much rock is holding back just by looking at that right there there's a lot of weight over us in these old mines this is a photogenic looking uh section right here oh yeah until you get back there a little ways ah photogenic didn't say i want to crawl through it but yeah it's photogenic yeah so the maps we have this drift actually goes out there probably 700 feet i'm okay but i mean it i've never personally wanted to go into this and i would never want i would never do it that's because of how unstable this is yeah it'd be a tough crawl yeah and i'd be afraid of bumping anything in this yeah i'm not saying i haven't done dumb like that before but yeah yeah this doesn't look appealing nothing else it's got those cool old uh unmilled timbers yeah which is more more raw pine with bark on it yeah i like it those are at least 100 years old probably almost 150 right 140 140 yeah that's awesome it's amazing how well that's preserved down here quick look at the rock here some really solid gobbing there on the sides i haven't really been talking about that but that's a quality goblin what do you got there on top of an old folgers can huh you can kind of see the it's hard to see in the light but you can definitely see the yeah coffee cup exactly wow this one runs back and hits a cave stove there's just about a one foot hall hole that can be crawled through for air so that's it for that we just checked out that section we are back at the 200 level of the shaft here and to my embarrassment we're going down the one that i assume went nowhere oh nice old tobacco's in prince albert the light's a bit too bright that's great i love seeing those we've got a lot of them down here yeah that's nice that they you know have a site like this the looters haven't picked over yeah they've hit the upper levels kind of um lower stuff was relatively untouched that's great i'll drift right there ah little pocket wins down there so this is this is actually a punch through into a sub-level stop system that's right underneath us it's actually just as big as the one we hiked down through no kidding yeah that's awesome yeah i'm assuming they they made this punch through for air because there is air flow down yeah i can feel a little bit and i i've come up from the bottom here underneath this level and actually crawled into and up into this hole and got to the bottom of this huh that's a nice scene right there very cool see how far that thing goes look at that wow yeah that's a good run that's a good 200 300 feet before a turn yeah yeah that's impressive careful through here yeah ah looks like our resident predator has been eating well resident predator yep um we have badgers and we have ringtail cats in here oh that's impressive yeah that'll be awesome see a badger underground i've seen i've seen the badger we have have you really it's not good he's not very friendly no badgers are tough i believe they're members of the same family as wolverines actually yeah there's another place where that there's another place where that stove punches up into here oh it's neat seeing stuff like that just shooting off down yeah there's there's stuff on the side here that goes up that's been filled yeah these are old old timbers you guys the meyers i put these in are long gone you gotta open that's a great view that actually goes up and and turns vertical and connects to 100 level as well huh we haven't been able to navigate it just because it's vertical right huh lots of airflow down here from these places it still keeps going you

Channel: TVR Exploring

Views: 31,891

Rating: 4.9516702 out of 5

Keywords: Girard Mine: Time Capsule Of A Mine Beneath Tombstone Arizona - Part 1, Girard Mines, Tombstone, Tombstone Arizona, Girard Mine, Exploring Abandoned Mines, Mining History, Abandoned Mine, Mine Exploring, Mine Shaft, Adit, Stope, Winze, Ghost Town, Mines of the West

Id: m81oDV5l9W0

Length: 30min 42sec (1842 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021