Panamint City Part 2 - Exploring Its Mining History

all right so that's the crest of the panimates and we're hiking along this mining road up to the wyoming mine which is pretty much the largest mine impediment city in terms of the underground workings and uh yeah there should be a lot of really neat stuff there so this is going to be a really cool explorer up over there you can see sourdough canyon and the remains of the mill we checked out the other day right there and that's where we spent the night so there's the wyoming mine that um lower light colored waste rock pile is a much newer added but the older workings are about 100 to 200 feet above that and it's really cool because you can see the tram towers running down the mountain see that there's one tram tower and there's another on a dry stack pad and that was uh used to send ore down to the large production mill the main town site and yeah this mine the one mine dates back to 18 1870s i think it was 1873 that it was discovered and first worked and its peak was from that year to about the mid-1870s um until the town pretty much fell apart the road washed away and the mill burned down and that was pretty much the end of the heyday for this mine but it was reworked in the 20s and i think again in the 70s so we should be seeing a mix of old and new up here at this mine so we made it to the first at it the one with the large light waste rock pile and there's a structure up here xavier is checking it out right now but right over here there's a little um dynamite storage at it and actually uh they're going to add it into the hillside and it has a metal door on it it'll be a bit hard to squeeze in there but here i'll give you guys a look yeah it doesn't go back very far does it that's all there is to it yeah so here's the building and i think this one was constructed in the 1970s and let's go inside that's cool now check out this uh this air blower right here that's really neat so this motor is in alice chalmers and i wonder what uh miranda's blower is i don't know i can't say a name plate may have been homemade possibly and over here we have the electrical panel and not really much else there's some more modern trash now coming out this way you can see the uh vent pipe running right into the the mine at it yeah we'll go ahead in there and see what it's all about all right let's head in the mine it's cool because the vent pipe for the vent tubing is still strung up this is the first large mine in panama city that we're exploring so pretty neat and this was a silver mine are primarily mining silver possibly a little bit of gold too but the ore found in these mines was really rich but it only occurred in small pockets along the veins and the reason why the town died is because they depleted those pockets of ore and they couldn't really find any new ones they had no idea where along the vein they were but this this tunnel we're in right now we're at it this dog much later has to try to undercut the old workings and i guess find any downward extension of the vein yeah it goes in for quite a long ways and you can see they were using um um college mine trucks for this they're actually driving these uh small vehicles and we saw a mine haulage truck down the canyon at the start of the hike it washed down okay got some timber sets it's kind of a natural fissure running up that way because i believe a lot of this was hosted in limestone and marble so there's always a lot of caves and fishers and those so that says a fire on it i can't see what the rest of it says i think they took these timbers off of something else looks like uh they're following the vein in this section definitely so i've got another few hundred feet and that it sort of starts to slope downward now some more timbering it's interesting the way they have those anchors in there told up the timbers yep that's all she wrote i believe this was a a failed addict they didn't find any good ore so walking back through this timbered section i noticed that there's a drill steel here and uh here's the tip of it i believe that's a tungsten carbide insert also um in this timbered section there's a a second blower i think i guess this is like a little booster for the one outside george phil pot company pretty neat let's see if she'll start nope we also got a sleeping bat here so i'll try to leave him alone [Applause] it's always nice walking out of an attic to a great view so here's one of the tram towers for the wyoming mine and this tramway was originally constructed in about 1875 by the surprise valley mining company which was the company that built the the old mill down at the city but this was uh restored in the 1920s by the panama mining company who did a bit of work on the wyoming mine yeah this thing is is really cool and let's go see if i can get a view of another tram tower yeah there's a second one right here and the third one oh that's awesome and take a look at that there's one tower second tower and then all the way down there is the the old mill that is a cool shot and of course there's a beautiful look at surprise canyon so we've decided instead of hiking up the road to the next attic we're just going to head straight up and we're doing this because it's really interesting terrain and also we get to see the other tram towers along the way up so and you can see the uh the old tram cable along with a modern electrical cable but i have to say you can definitely feel the altitude up here so i'm at another tram tower this one's in pretty good condition but right down here we found some square nails that are used in the original construction of these towers and uh squaring rules are really cool because these were likely built down in panama city by a blacksmith and maybe they even had a blacksmith shop up here somewhere but yeah there's also a bunch of round nails in the tram towers for when they restored them in the 1920s so here's probably the most complete tram tower we found so far and this one actually has the rollers at the top these uh tram towers would have had two cables one was a stationary cable and that the ore buckets would sit on and the other one was a powered cable that would move that would actually haul the tram buckets up and down and those wheels are for the uh the powered cable and likely on top there's an anchor for the for the stationary cable this is just such a great view what an awesome shot well guys we made it um this is the top of the tramway you can see up there the uh orcart rails coming across the trestle and these are dump into our waiting tram cars likely and yeah back here you can see the bull wheel for the tramway and it has these uh teeth in it i think they have a specific name i'm not really sure what they are though but as the cable came around and hit the bull wheel these would clamp down on top of it a lot of these are pretty stuck though so i can't really show you yeah they would close over the uh the cable and that way the cable wouldn't slip on the ball wheel and yeah there's a bunch of uh oh here's the brake lever right here you can see the the brake band at the top of the bull wheel okay so here's a look at the top of the ball wheel and uh this lever is the brake lever but um this wheel here is used to actually tighten the brake so i guess as it wears down you can tighten it or i guess it depends on how much uh how many buckets you're using and how much how much braking power you actually need but yeah right up here is to add it and i can see some other equipment looks like a compressor and a big air tank so yeah this is a really really cool sight well we made it up to the tramway tunnel there's xavier standing on the trestle he's pretty scared of heights so he's shooting his pants right now but uh yeah the rails come out over here there's an or car bin it's a pretty uh decent sized ore car the rails run into this attic which is partially collapsed and uh that at it was uh known back in the day as the tramway tunnel because as you may have guessed it's because it's at the top of the tramway right over here we have a really massive compressor some really big air tanks and so this was one that was likely held up in the 70s yeah this thing is massive it's big for a portable compressor the engine is a general motors there's all the compressor gauges [Applause] but the compressor itself is a gardener denver okay i'm walking out onto the trestle oh man it's high up here yeah there's a shot looking back towards the our car and the portal there's a compressor and likely they dumped the uh the ore into an ore bin and that fed into the tram cars and way way down there is panama city there's the hilton and the other buildings around there there's a sourdough canyon in where we spent the night and again these mountains are just gorgeous and right over the crest there is death valley okay just inside the portal here and some of these timbers are really old you can tell they're hand hewn but yeah let's go check out the tramway tunnel this one has some pretty cool stuff in it and i can already see one of those cool things yeah so it looks like we have the base to that yellow or car outside awesome does she roll oh she rolls really nicely that's awesome and uh any uh manufacturer's marker there is it's a joshua hendy cool well keep going down the attic looks like it bends off to the right and according to the maps i have this is where they intersected the wyoming vein yeah you can definitely tell there's a quartz fan right here so now we're in the drift yeah there's lots of really pretty uh colors in here really nice mineralization yeah a lot of this is um fluorescence growing out of the walls really pretty lots of iron staining and up ahead i see another cool thing i'm sure you guys can see it too awesome another or car this one is complete and it's on a nice clean section of track by the looks of it yeah look at the bumper on here look at a chain two of the or cars together yeah let's uh let's go around here yeah so this is a cs card [Music] or car let's go around the back here and give her a dump i can't really dump this car all the way because the bumper in front or the hitch in front have you really so um yeah so the only way to dump it would be to tip it to the side of it but still this thing is really cool that's in great shape okay we're gonna have to ride this uh of course don't run me over buddy oh no but the thing is because there's a downhill slope yeah look you can just kind of there oh she's gaming i know i i'm i'm joining you we're going for a ride [Music] gravity powered are you ready i guess i'm going for a little ride let's go oh we're taking it fast [Music] well that was great here i gotta give you a round so [Music] minds make us feel like kids again we're still kids yeah look at all this course here look at that natural fissure it definitely looks natural in there a lot of formations and uh here we go this is the main winds here yeah so this winds drops down supposedly 200 feet and apparently someone actually repelled down there and they they stated that the ladders as they were going down were breaking free but they reached the bottom and didn't find anything so no need for us to go down there but uh look at this little winch they're using air-powered winch actually it's a slusher it's double drum so i don't know if they could have been using this to winch up buckets but maybe they're also i'm doing some flushing oh actually yeah they're definitely doing some slushing i see the slusher bucket right there yeah and there's there's the uh it's got that it's a ramp so they pull the ore carts right underneath this exactly washer uh bucket right up and then dump right into the carts yep i've seen a couple slusher ramps but never uh wrapped with this flusher so this is gorgeous electrical panel there and this raise right here should go actually up to another tunnel higher up so this is the one we're going to travel maybe if that's uh safe enough if not then we can go climb higher up on the hill and and enter that way let's go ahead back over here and check out the working face where that slasher bucket is so there's that slusher and there's this slusher ramp the harvey just dropped right down there into an ore car and here's the bucket it's pretty neat and yeah the reason why those flushers have two drums how they can obviously scrape the ore um towards the ore car but also to move the bucket back to the face yeah she just faces out there huh yeah unfortunately another drill rod jammed in the face oh wow look at the vein back here did you see this the what the vein back here look at all the other targets no i did not see that yeah the copper and then the gray stuff is i think i think that's the silver that might be some right there so yeah it's pretty apparent why they were reworking this oh there's some pyrite in here high sulfides so we've decided that we're not going to climb up this rays it's uh just way too steep but this should connect to another attic up above us called the kennedy tunnel so uh yeah hopefully we'll see the top of it so i think it stopped yeah that was a beautiful throw yep 200 feet down to the bottom wow right here we have some drill hole scrapers so after they drilled a hole for the dynamite they would use these to clean the dust out here's a much larger one for a very deep hull i suppose and yeah we're going to go head on out and then keep heading up the mountainside to the kennedy tunnel here's a good look at the wyoming vein you can see a bit of blue in there a bit of gray and i just run this all along this drift there's the ore car again here's a close-up of some of this mineralization here and some of the efflorescence it's just gorgeous all right so we're hoping that the kennedy tunnel is right up here above this dry stack wall there's definitely some kind of structure here and uh man this is steep it's really rough going and there's uh xavier it's a good perspective to show how steep it really is okay so there's no attitude at that flat pad that was just for a building but the added is right above there this is it this is the kennedy tunnel let's go explore it okay heading in here you can see the vein they're chasing very clearly you can see how they stopped it out right up there and it looks like they sunk the winds here too and it's all filled yeah it's a really cool shot with all the stoles those were most likely put in there in the 1870s and yeah you can see the vein it's really pretty and it runs off this way and it's looking like uh we're gonna end in a collapse that's as far as we can go okay so we're just above the attic we just checked out and i don't think that was actually the kennedy tunnel um i think we missed the kennedy tunnel on the way up and it's a bit further to the west but right behind me you have a really big open cut and this is the top of the wyoming vein and you can see a timber down over there it looks like it ran down likely to that small addit that we had just gone inside yeah they pretty much just uh trenched the whole vein out here and um this is one of the pockets that they got the most ore out of and let's go over a little crest here see the other side of it so i'm at the end of the trench and in this little canyon right here is where the limestone tunnel is and we're definitely going to go over there and try to check that out but first we're going to try to see if we can find the kennedy tunnel that we most likely missed and see if it's even open but uh i'm on the trail right now that loops back around to be the first trench i saw and yeah just look at that view gorgeous there's the peniment valley and then over there's the argus range and beyond that you can see the sierras way over there yeah can you see mount whitney from here you think it's possible it should be the tallest one that one straight across from us is it uh i don't think so i think that's more likely atlanta peak i think it might be it's gonna be it might be a bit further north than what we can see because that's a launch yeah across yeah it might be those peaks far off to the right there it could be one of those because also it doesn't look like the tallest because it's a bit further back yeah so it could be one of those yeah look at look at that canyon that's where we're going to be hiking down marvel canyon okay so right here we have a bunch of cabin ruins a little hinge right there and they run all along here so it looks like the these are for the miners to stay in i'm guessing they would have been run right here and to go around this corner i'll see some stacked rock foundations and there's also a flat spots down this way for other other buildings and it's pretty much just belted into the hillside here's a look way down to the city and well we're gonna hike our way around the corner here to the limestone tunnel in there i think there's a bit of other workings there too to check out so we're hiking along this really cool uh miners trail a lot of it is held up by a dry stack walls and i believe this is the trail to the hemlock mine and if that's the case they would have shipped all the ore from the hemlock along this over to the tramway and coming around the corner i can see a really big dry stack wall over there it looks like there might be that was probably either a building or i don't know if that's an added over there and then there's a this massive waste rock pile for the limestone tunnel okay so we just noticed that there were actually ties built into the trail here so they were likely running uh or cars along this and uh yeah that's how they got all the ore to the the top of the tramway so we made it to the limestone tunnel there's the massive waste rock pile and they have a cool dress stacked wall here and you know the portal's right over here behind this fallen tree and apparently they pulled a lot of ore out of the stops of this attic so i'm really looking forward to going in here okay i just made it inside and here's a look down the tunnel and uh i'm pretty excited for this one because i've never seen any pictures or photos of this one i mean there are footprints in here so some people have found it but i don't think it's very well known just go straight back here as a cross cut and eventually we should run into the vein [Music] oh wow look at all this um timber here the live edge timber that's really neat so the main cross cut looks like a dead end's right over there but uh the drift or the that it tees here and this way to the right goes into one of the large stops that they removed a lot of rich ore out of oh yeah look at that that is really cool all those stalls going up there and it cuts across or that way too but uh looks like there's some cribbing yeah look at that it's cribbing with a live edge timbers looks like whatever is holding up is gone dang this is this is pretty cool yeah so the the tramway tunnel was you know constructed in the 1870s but all the stuff in there is just modern stuff but this this hasn't been reworked this is all the original timbering and everything yeah just look at the way the cribbing is falling over so that's looking back towards where i came from here's another look at the stop that's about uh uh 40 feet up there you know let's slowly work our way past this cribbing okay i just made it past and it looks like we're gonna i'm gonna run into a collapse here yep totally sealed this likely uh went up to the surface that's why it's caved in but yeah there's that uh cribbing well taking another look at this this might actually be an ore chute that they constructed and this was to help funnel the rock down with more cars but it could have also been for supports it's hard to say yeah let's work our away and check out that other branch in the main tunnel okay so that's looking towards the main portal that was this big stop i just checked out and now i'm gonna head along this drift where xavier is and according to the maps i have of this mine there is a really deep winds over here and i believe we've just arrived to it all right let's take a look down oh damn rock test yeah do it okay here's one ready i think i got caught up on the side oh that was a spicy throw right there ah here we go there's another one take two quit my day job become a baseball star why don't i i think the same thing happened oh my god swinging a miss strike two anyway should i try again or yes do one more and if you fail me you're going down there okay here we go there's a third time's the charm there we go that fell for quite a ways well according to the maps this goes down 300 feet and yeah and i don't really think there's any major levels down here i think it was more of an exploratory wind yeah so we're just throwing rocks down there and good thing we didn't wake up uh mr sleepy bat so sorry to disturb you yeah this is the uh this is the foot wall right here and there's the vein and you said you saw something that you almost stepped on yeah i was walking through here and buried in these rocks check this out it's a little viable what and it looks like it's full of a fine sample it was sent up right when i found it sort of nestled between the rocks but this is an old bottle the new ones are just straight or see how this guy's got a little uh lip on it for our cork that's neat yeah it's really cool well i hope whatever's in there isn't going to kill us uh they were probably taking yeah for assay samples or they might have been mixing it with something you know you shake it and see if yeah they're probably just collecting uh the vein material doing small little samples i don't know but i i thought they usually uh grab more than that well usually a bag full yeah well i'm gonna keep going down okay if the maps are correct it makes it right and then a left so they were following this vein and for every reason they didn't continue but i headed off this direction and it looks like they actually intersected a even bigger vein yeah and it's interesting because this tunnel is at the same level as a tramway tunnel and they sort of head towards each other but they they don't connect but like i know only a couple hundred feet at max you're at the end looks like we've got a bit of a minor graffiti but there's no way i can make it out but just the quartz in here is it's really fantastic um there's some sort of writing there that might be looks like it says 46 so maybe 1946. that was probably people sampling this [Music] it's really pretty stuff okay so this is a large open stop above the limestone tunnel and i'm guessing i went all the way down to those uh to that collapse we saw on the big stops but right over there is another added well this doesn't really go back anywhere you can see the end anyways um you can see they basically just took a big slice out of the vein right there so right over here we discovered a really deep open stop and down below it we found a few areas that looked like there were attitudes punching in but they were all collapsed so likely um the stop was dug from those adidas well we've pretty much completed the wyoming mine um except we didn't climb up that rays in the tramway tunnel the one with the ore car and that apparently should connect with the kennedy tunnel beyond that collapse we found so maybe another time we will go back and climb up that raise i'll have to think about it it might be too dangerous but oh paint me like one of your french girls jack anyways we're going to go off to the hemlock mine the shenanigans i tell you this

Channel: Forgotten Mining History

Views: 76,217

Rating: 4.9196486 out of 5

Keywords: mine, mines, mine exploring, mine exploration, abandoned, abandoned mine, ghost town, exploring, exploration, adventure, underground, silver, silver mine, mining, geology, minerals, adit, tunnel, stope, panamint, panamint city, panamint valley, surprise canyon, death valley, history, historic, tramway, ore car, ore cart

Id: 9h-NGAEBjq0

Length: 41min 50sec (2510 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021