The Lost Town of the Uncle Sam Mine - Has Nobody Been Here in a Century?

[Music] in a remote corner of the desert between nevada and california lies a curious canyon with a mysterious ghost town in it and supposedly nobody has been there in the upwards of a century this expedition was the idea of my friend alan batera a ghost town archaeologist and author of the western places book series working on his next installment in the series about some of the smaller towns south of goldfield he spotted four dots on an antique map marking a cluster of buildings near an old mining claim there's no record of the name of this tiny town there's no record of the date there's no record of what is there today allen used to work for the united states census department and with all of his resources he still found no record of this place but here it was marked on this map as far as he was able to tell from his vast networking nobody alive has been there [Music] alan's friend owns a cabin in the partial ghost town of leida not too far away and this would be our starting point for the day [Music] in allen's books he never likes to write about a ghost town that he hasn't actually been to and this one was going to be a challenge fortunately we were able to join him on this at the cabin we went over our route but we weren't certain if we'd actually be able to make it into the canyon today or if the day would simply be a scouting trip heading into the canyon tomorrow instead ruins scatter the nevada desert at the end of nearly every old road but they've weathered so many sandstorms and been bleached under the summer sun that they've now almost become a part of the natural landscape [Music] the old stamp mill at the ruins of pigeon spring was the point where we left the highway behind it loomed over us like a castle gate and behind it was the desert wilderness [Music] these two mills are said to have been here and that one would be this one i think you'd see the steps yeah still exist and it says it's called the silver champion mill the mountain range was scattered with old mule trails and stagecoach roads in varying degrees of maintenance but several of these were uncharted one dead end after another but rarely did they come without some sort of a discovery at the end of it down one road we found a site that didn't seem to be associated with any known mining claims well if i had to guess i would say this is probably a one or two man operation maybe in the 1920s [Music] oh it just keeps on going up the hill too this is quite an installation so the mine must be right up there that's a tailing pile so it's right behind that and then we shoot it down here and i think this is probably just an organ and they would pile up the over there load it into trucks and carry it off which is what they were doing in the 1920s and using trucks to hold on [Music] [Music] another site had some more modern debris but alan suspected that the building itself may initially have been constructed as a stagecoach stop as the building materials dated to the early era of nevada and we were on the old 1880 stage route to gold mountain to the south we got a 1956 trailer here with a permit from 2011. [Music] what i can tell you is that the border here is locally made cement it crumbles pretty easily in later years they use portland cement and that kept walls up pretty well i would guess that the building itself dates to about 18 76 77 no just storage ruins were around every corner we didn't even have the time to stop and survey all of them in most cases we were given the impression of the date that they were abandoned by the car that was left along with the building of course not that this is a reliable reference the old and mostly abandoned roads quickly became a maze none of the roads out here match what's on here the atlas and the satellite gps were woefully inaccurate and we found ourselves actually using the drone to scout ahead and frankly it was with this method that we were finally able to put ourselves onto the right track and by then half the day had burned by after three hours of winding through back country the road opened out onto a cliff overlooking a canyon but was this the right canyon here you can see the problem this is about as close as we get by road and the mine camp is 800 feet down now do we know if this is alum creek we don't know anything yet i know i've never been here before stopping for lunch and surveying the area compared to our map we were able to determine that yes this was the correct canyon but now we needed to decide the best way down into it there were no roads marked on the map we have a trail going to our left which is to the south we can follow that it goes down into this canyon at the bottom of this canyon is the alum creek and poison spring and about a mile due south of here is the junction with the uncle sam creek and right there within the fork of that are the four buildings we're looking for well it turned out that the road was completely impassable wiped out after around 800 feet from a massive old landslide and we needed to double back up to the cliff top further eating into the day using the drone we were able to discern another trail on the opposite side of the canyon offering a clearer access all the way down but this one still looked rugged it was very windy but the drone managed to make it and followed the alum creek all the way down to where it meets the uncle sam creek and from there we were able to actually use the drone to chart our path going down into the canyon we think this might be the road going down there's no way we're going to get the car down so we're just going to scout up ahead a little bit and see if this is it and i think the plan now is we're going to come back tomorrow and try to get down we knew that there were no reports of anyone having been in the canyon and at the town in nearly a century but it became apparent that likely nobody had walked this trail in as much time it was unmaintained decrepit and completely without a trace of any recent activity no footprints no modern litter and nothing was unnaturally disturbed and the road is definitely not maintained i very well might be the first person walking this trail in a century that's quite a thought well alan you sure as hell not getting past this yeah it's looking a little rough here i don't think any car i owe was gonna do this where would the mine be in relation to uh the buildings we're looking for it's probably in this basin somewhere because like i like i say miners did not want to walk uphill after a day's work so it's downhill to the mine camp now we turn around head back resupply get some food join up with the others come back out here earlier tomorrow it's past three o'clock now we don't want to be in the canyon after dark and we don't want to have to drive out of here after dark so it's a good call to do this tomorrow we scouted about a third of the way down into the canyon down towards um it would probably take us out into the alum canyon and uh now we'll be coming back tomorrow heading out of here we're going to leave markers along the trail so we know how to come back here without wasting time looking around again allen stayed at the cabin in lida but emma and i indulged in historical comfort and stayed at the 1907 mizba hotel in nearby tonapa a hotel with a history of all the wild west tropes bank robbery brothels murder and outlaws supposedly even wyatt earp once worked at this place if there's enough interest i'd actually be willing to make a full video on this building someday starting bright and early we retraced our path from the day before we missed our chance at conducting this expedition on the cool overcast weather of yesterday today it was sunny hot and clear allen's friend accompanied us to the trailhead where we briefed him on our plan for the day if we didn't return by dark he knew where to start looking it looks like it just completely just that road just went off yeah it'd be pretty rough to get past that yeah and that's what's left of it boy oh boy allen's friend had left us behind and it was now nine in the morning and we were alone out here it's three miles down into the canyon and three miles back up that might not sound like much but the temperature was forecasted to surpass a hundred degrees fahrenheit or almost 38 celsius by midday from the crest of the mountain looking down into the canyon one can see death valley on the horizon one of the hottest places on earth the nearest weather station in the valley would register 117 degrees or 47 celsius that afternoon we'd take it cautiously and of course ready to pull the plug if anyone became seriously overheated and we carried an excessive amount of water and gatorade some of the roads we followed getting out to this canyon were old wagon and stage roads but the one that we were on now likely was a secondary access road for the miners in the late 1800s behind us would be several large towns and even cities but in the direction we were going beyond this mystery town there was absolutely nothing for another hundred miles ahead the road had been wiped out in some areas over the last century washed away from the normally comfortable 15 foot width to a thin ledge looming over 50 foot precipices [Music] i've got nothing to say it's hot it's hot long walk we're rationing water not much more to say looks like right now i guess we're about halfway down into the canyon it's getting hotter as we get lower we do have the occasional breeze really can't beat that view but actually here's our first piece of litter that is old there's no markings whatsoever on it that is old and that is hot only a mile down into the canyon and the heat was already getting to us we'd stop for rests in the shade before continuing farther i see structures down there quite a bit actually like more than just your usual abandoned mind looks like it was abandoned and then not touched for a very long time so we might find some interesting things down there after around a three-hour descent we reached the top of the alum creek it wasn't dry and there actually was more than just a trickle running from it and it flowed from what was called poison spring it's pretty amazing if there's water in the creek too bad it's poisonous i could really go for a refill of stuff right now if the names didn't make it obvious enough the yellow growth around the water sure made it clear that we would not be refilling our canteens here we did cool our shirts in it though however ultimately staining them permanently but well that was worth it in this heat here is the little that we do know going into this place in the 1870s a mining claim was purchased in this canyon and it was called the uncle sam mine we know that there was a wave of mining work done then and likely another wave of work during the 1920s when several of the nearby canyons saw mining activity in 1922 the uncle sam mine was still trading on the san francisco stock exchange that's all we know if these buildings are from the early 1870s mine they'd be made out of stone and would be one of the oldest lost towns in the united states if they're made of wood then they're likely from the later 1920s mining work and still would be of high historical value to survey yeah oh yeah [Music] here we go [Music] a big one another one back there i've spotted three here alan okay so likely we've got two more alan there's a car back here emma come here quick well we made it here which is amazing it's a site i found on maps a 1957 topo sheets showed four vacant buildings i think we found five collapse buildings and i was hoping to find an 1875 mine camp with rock structures but this is all frame construction and there's an old automobile so it pretty much points to a 1920s mine camp and they probably came up from below rather than coming down the way we did it's almost impossible to tell what any of these buildings are the one behind us over here in front of me has their big stack so that might have been a kitchen galley type place we found some shoes other artifacts but they're all 1920ish [Music] so much to know so much to explore we can only do so much and it's hot out not many people have been here certainly not since the 1920s and i think we should congratulate ourselves that we made the trip made it and made it back i hope i have ham cheese and bread but in the event that we were successful today which we were what if champagne's ever been opened in this canyon if they had a car down here something tells me it's possible that emma might be the first woman in here that's also quite possible hello would you like something sure thank you very much sure thank you these are quite comfortable dwellings in fact some of them i'm wondering if they weren't two floors tall this one here there's a lot of wood piled up screen doors there's actually quite a bit of extra screen right over here but this one has screen doors terracotta plumbing there's even indication of electrical wiring on that one over there but alan believes that was off of a generator it's hot down here but i believe these houses made it quite comfortable it's all these nails but the framing the frame is made of wood in this car well not the not the chassis but the cab frame is all wood i'm out of here we later found out from one of allen's friends that the automobile was a ford model a circa 1930 pushing back a little bit the last confirmed visit to this canyon it likely would have been driven in from the south up the canyon and not down from above the way we walked in most ghost towns out here have been thoroughly picked over with nothing but broken bottles and rusty metal remaining to see nearly complete shoes boot buckles tools and discarded personal effects make this one of the most complete sites i've ever seen out here everything was there making this place almost like a time capsule [Music] i think it's safe to say i have no need to ever come back to this cannon we found the town we surveyed it we documented it we found the mine we found the creeks what more is there except thirst as alan had previously said miners did not want to walk uphill after a long day's work but we still had to our supplies were running low at this point and with the sun overhead we had a three mile hike up out of the canyon i'd be lying if i said that we didn't struggle our way up i have no phone signal but my phone is still displaying the weather the floor of the canyon a little bit down towards the end of alum creek about a half a mile farther it's 117 degrees fahrenheit right now or um 47 degrees celsius all right let's catch up with that and make sure he's all right would i ever do this again no i would never now [Music] 400 feet almost there there she is what a wonderful sight waiting for ana we drank the first half of this bottle at uncle sam mine we saved the second half from when we know we all survived and made it up to the car we're all a little dead but not completely dead cheers cheers to the mine in your next book air conditioning yeah well alan how are you feeling hey ladies you got to be sore tomorrow but i'm glad we did it [Music] this food is so good and we're so tired this is something to look forward to [Music] i've been working on this book for maybe five years and was almost ready to publish three years ago and i knew there was more information i know there's still a lot more information out here there's not too many people that even know about this area so there's not a built-up interest of people waiting for a book on it but anyway i want people to know that i do my legwork i do my homework i get out there i won't write about some place and i haven't walked the ground or know what it looks like and here we are this expedition was able to successfully locate the old uncle sam mining camp in alum creek nevada first established circa 1875 the work continued on and off until we believed the mid-1920s but that automobile down there told us the early 1930s was likely the last confirmed time anybody had visited it's highly unlikely that anybody has passed through there since then and if they had they did so without a trace [Music] allen's book series western places is a must-have for ghost town enthusiasts and western historians they can be found at westernplaces.net and his installation covering this canyon has been released this week [Music] you

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 312,074

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Id: LsPM5cOjDIc

Length: 21min 14sec (1274 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 26 2022

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