The Shaft of Broken Dreams; A Miner Message from the Past

previously on abandoned and forgotten places [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] well hey everybody welcome back all right well before we get started today i wanted to put out a big thank you to jeff williams and his wife a while back they put together a nice little segment in their video um they were they told everybody that i was going through a health issue and to send some love my direction hey jeff i really do appreciate that you guys are awesome and your channel is great too jeff i mean guys if if you don't know who jeff williams is you need to head on over to his channel and check it out it's ask jeff williams that's his youtube channel learn more about his uh his stuff go to jeffwilliams.com it's right here just click on the link down in the description area jeff is awesome when it comes to geology and another thing that i really like about his channel is when i'm exploring these abandoned mines there's a lot of times that um i find things that i don't get too in depth into like mine construction shaft construction things of that nature and that's where jeff steps in and shows you guys how a lot of these places were constructed because he himself has his own gold mine and if you guys want to learn how to actually find gold out in the hills ask jeff williams is the youtube channel for you thanks again jeff i really appreciate it oh and by the way jeff i really want to get in contact with you i think i might be down in your neck of the woods so please send me an email to abandon and forgotten places at hotmail.com that's abandoned and forgotten places at hotmail.com i want to get in touch with you like i said i might be in your neck of the woods here pretty soon all right guys i've got a 400 foot shaft for you today with a real skinny little man way and that's why i'm not dressed up like buzz lightyear rather than doing that i've got my extra batteries in my pockets got some water here got my uh air monitors on my chest because this one here is going to be really skinny trying to get down this man way but it's 400 feet deep you guys saw this on one of my dse videos down in the bottom we got some cool stuff like a sawhorse maybe some drill steel i don't know we saw some neat things down in there so hopefully the man way will be intact all the way to the bottom all right without any further ado let's get started okay so let me show you what we got going on here so here's the shaft and uh if you guys can remember this is the one that's collared all the way to the bottom okay i can't imagine how many board feet of lumber they used in this so what we did is uh let me get my lights turned on here there we go so what we did is uh we got an extension ladder because it's missing the ladder in the first 20 feet to keep people out of here and that's what we're gonna head down right now so i'm just gonna set that back there for a moment i'm going to see if i can't get my foot stuck or my butt stuck on a nail exactly can't use that that's a mover huh oh this is a stinky mine i can already smell it all right let's make sure that landing can take my weight yep it can you'll be okay for sure did you want to use the bucket and a rope to get the camera down nope i'm going to do it like i always do it first of all i see all that white powder coming off my glass switch my hands here oopsie all right i had a camera rig malfunction give me a second guys there switch my weight here there we go so what we're doing today is uh something a little different i've never taken the 360 cam into a man way before so this ought to be pretty darn cool okay all right i got to the first landing and let's take a look at number two here now i figure we got 20 sets of ladders we got a skinny down and here is set number two this landing is in really good shape and just as i suspected the ladders are too all right give me a second here set that down until i get my footing let's see here oh hey no that's not what i want you to do i mean one second guys another camera difficulty here there we go okay yep i'm really happy i didn't bring the backpack boy these are skinny whiz see so the nice thing about uh going down a shaft like this with landings is if one of these ladders does do something silly you're only going to fall about 15 to 20 feet which is still ain't gonna feel very good but it's better than falling 400 right all right randy you can start coming on down uh the ladders are looking really good shape oh nice it does fall it's only 15 to 20 feet yeah it's only 15 to 20. randy i'm telling you man it's as easy as falling down the ladder what a relief yeah except i'm gonna there there we go okay the landings are in really good shape too randy all right set that down a minute yeah and each and every one of these what i'm gonna have to do is set the camera down for a second until i get my big fat butt through the hole there we go all right what do we have on this next one so um take a look real quick guys here at the construction you see how they notched each one of these out see that notch in the board right there and now look at the thickness of these boards two inches they are two by eights and in some cases two by ten really i mean this has got to be the most stout mine shaft that i have ever seen now watch the second i say that all right that's just my that was my breath all right this next one that ladder is a little bit longer there's a dead mouse oh i can't believe how skinny they make these those guys back in the day they were just little fellers so uh you might be asking what's the purpose of these man ways like this and why did they make them so small well it's entirely made for safety for the miners um you know if something happened with the hoist there is always another means of getting out of the mine i mean what if worst case scenario you had a fire or something like that at least you had a sec some kind of a secondary escape route you know okay down here on the floor right there is a dead pack rat that's a pack rat now give me a second guys i'm gonna set my camera for it down for a moment i can tell right now i've got a yeah i got to move my monitors lower because they're they're capturing my breath the co2 coming out of my breath so i'm gonna put him at about belly button height let's see how that works okay all right here we are to the next landing how's it coming randy you weren't kidding it is tight yep and i told you i didn't use i did bring my backpack i'm struggling okay uh-oh what's going on here boy boy nicely constructed though fellers must have got themselves a heck of a deal on lumber have you ever seen a a shaft constructed this way randy i don't know i mean look at look at how thick the timbers are yeah they are really solid they are solid as i as i've ever seen what is that uh two and a half three inches thick yeah yeah like two by two by eights i'm guessing let's see here we got there's someone there's a letter m now as i'm going down these here's another thing look at the construction underneath the landings see how they block embrace that there yeah but i'm looking at the nails the nails look galvanized i think we're in a very much more modern mine here like i said earlier 40 40s or 50s okay right here we're down 75 feet oh this is tight only i think when this mine closed down the workers went to work at willy wonka's chocolate factory okay randy where i'm at we're at 300 we're at uh 75 feet down only 325 more to go right there okay i told randy i said yep this is gonna be a an easy day okay set that there now i probably won't be taking you all the way down the main way with me we'd end up with a hour-long video of nothing but ladders [Laughter] yeah and we've got compression see now this happens over time little by little by little the earth pushes in i'll be real happy to get past this hey randy yeah okay so about two ladders down from you we've got a bunch of compression so uh just be careful through this section okay all right got past the compression area i'm happy to see that the mine is getting looking to be in better shape and the reason oh yeah i see why look here guys so on the other side of them boards you can see solid rock so right here okay here let me show you this on the drone footage now you can see that the shaft goes down into a big pile of waste rock well somewhere that waste rock had to meet up with solid rock of the hill where i'm standing right now is where that solid rock meets the waste rock so you had all that pressure from the waste rock pushing down and in on these on this lagging and that's why there was a compression occurring right through that section yep i see a little more compression right there too it'd be interesting to see if we're past the waste rock down here two hours later so we gotta rip your can we have sample bags and we got a ladder oh there's the bottom okay here's that vertical ladder that we saw on the dse video all right let's see if i can wiggle over there oh my gosh i barely get through this all right little by little here all right now i just need to have my darn here now shoot come here camera there we go so isn't it odd that there are no drifts anywhere down to here yeah so they were after something deep and that's it huh okay we found it we're at the bottom yay come on down randy all right good grief whew time to take a break take a drink of water did you look at these newspapers are they they're those are sample bags oh you sure yeah in modern looking group here generic springfeld or field springfield root beer never heard of that yeah that's a new one it's like a grocery store generic brand that one's kind of skinny isn't it yeah i'm trying to figure out how am i going to get my backpack to there totally turn sideways how did you get through this good god i know oh that's a tight one my gosh are you filming this yes i am we gotta see just how tight that is and it's tight the backpack had to go up to my head to get through there good job randy all right wow here we go here we are okay guys we're gonna take a break and uh some of it get some of the sweat out of my eyes and recompose ourselves get a drink of water and we will be right back watch out for that stick of dynamite randy yeah right okay everybody that was nice we had a chance to take a break randy jumped down into the sump and uh there was indeed something pretty stinky down in there wasn't there randy yeah and uh the water bottles that you threw down for us to drink all exploded all exploded and reactivated the dead things that were in the hole well i'm glad that you uh did i guess i i am i'll be quiet now i i'm happy that uh you did bring your backpack so i can haul them them blend plastic bottles back out of here so we don't trash the place up but anyways we're at the 400-foot level and we do have some artifacts down on here in here i can see a dynamite box off to the left okay that's one of the newer models um all kinds of stuff laying around down here there is some newspaper i saw right over here randy can you see if there's a date a date on any of that newspaper now more than likely rules for storing keeping moving thawing charging and handling dynamite oh okay yeah that's we've seen that that's all going to be for that all right paint can still got the tin shiny on there yep we've got bud light beer cans from probably the 80s or 90s um yeah the water bottles you are seeing those are ours there's a mouse nest under that board got wet from the water yep now guys here is so if you go back if you can remember the dse video that's where it said 400 feet on the wall that shelf right there had nothing but a bunch of nails and wire on it turning back around this direction just real quick the thing that we saw in the video turned out to be the lid on a cooler styrofoam lid on the cooler the mine continues up that direction but we're not going to go that way first turning back around we're gonna go this way randy do you find any other treasures for us up in here i wouldn't call it a treasure or like a oh here's a bird station there's a dead some kind of uh i don't know about those stripes and the sh the hey uh the head shape is kind of strange is that i don't think i don't think that's an owl i don't think that that's an owl here is a really old bottle down on that side over there yeah look at that take a look at the bottom randy sometimes sometimes there'll be a date in the bottom oh quit it let me just have to hang those mold scene goes to the top i'm going to move those monitors oh there's a brown recluse where right there hold on oh spider right there see there's a recluse right there so you have the little fiddle on his abdomen brown fiddle well i can't see from this distance not with my eyesight i don't have my glasses all right turn it around we've got an old package of chocolate chip cookies napa filter and a big pile of shims i like this so burlap it's so coarse and rough looking let's make some clothes out of that oh yeah okay so um let me pop you guys over to drone footage right now so the drift that we're traveling in goes this direction and it's just as i thought it would it's going to follow the trending dike moving from i think it's north to south i think it i'm just kind of kind of going off of memory here yeah i believe north to south and what do we have that's it this is it short and sweet nailed it you nailed it huh all right well turning back around like i said given the size of the waste rock pile outside um they had high hopes for this mine put a lot of money into the shaft but maybe when they finally got down here they ran out of dough all right let me show you guys this since we're right here here's the sump get a good look at it there that rock and those boards that you see down there randy just built that momentarily he was down there picking through the sump looking for bodies and all he could find was dead pack rats so there's nothing down there and it does not go left or right over there so what you got there paintbrush paint can they are like a paris green color anti-corrosion down here on the floor there's a bag of gypsum i wonder what they were using that for for a moment there i thought i thought it was uh um uh uh uh ammonium nitrate but no it's not yeah i saw that too gypsum i don't know what that would have been used for okay look at the level of compression on this board guys right over here by randy this one's definitely getting the squeeze big time and uh this one it's starting to come down yeah let's get out from under that as quick as possible okay are you going first yep i'll go first i'm gonna get over here let's see what we have pew just like that it got stinky oh this is really crumbly there we go okay anything to the left they were thinking about going off that direction and then they stopped all right there's some survey tape down on the floor and we have ourselves a bat well hey mr bat how you doing oh come here go get randy no go get randy he's right there behind me all right now look at look at the gypsum coming out of here right where the bat was right there see how shiny that is all gypsum go up here and say hi to mr bat one more time how you doing mr bat now you just stay right up here in the face that'll keep you from landing on randy's nose yeah okay turn it back around randy ain't nothing up in here but a bat i can't believe they dug this shaft and and this is it this is it can you believe that wow i know well expense let's uh let's show them some geology there oh yeah there's that piece of gypsum i saw uh yeah i don't know if this is a secondary formation after the exposure to the air but the crystals are fibrous yeah it could be epsomite uh it looks more like well it is kind of yeah you're right it's more elongated both epsimite and gypsum are sulfate minerals so that would make sense it's oxidation of the sulfides uh-huh there's some some of this copper crust might be that uh uh was that chalcanthite shell can't fight gel canthy if it was blue or copper yeah sulfate if it was blue it would be chalcanthite head back up a couple feet look look right above your head there look at that layer now see see that stuff just just kind of pull down on a chunk i mean i i'm not a big one off to the side there show everybody how crumbly that is look at that see how easy that breaks off now that's what i found in the uh in the haunted mine there was layers and layers of that that was coming down look at that you know what you gotta you wanna just take a specimen of that and um put it up on your ebay site randy there might be somebody out there that wants a wants to just have one that is cool looking at roof of crystal that is a nice one i like that randy do you have any do you have an ebay site well i do you do grab that one and uh i'll hey everybody i will put randy's um uh what do you call it ebay address i'll put that down in the description area so if you want to bid on that on that rock right there the one which the one in his right hand that that looks to be the coolest because it has the longer crystal they're both really nice yeah let's what do you think randy let's do both i didn't bring anything to bring back samples i don't have anything to wrap them with we have to find some burlap or something yeah we'll use a piece of that burlap somebody might just want a sample of that for their collection and that way we it didn't come all the way down here for nothing right randy wow yeah that is one heck of a shaft isn't that though isn't it this deep for nothing for this this little thing there's probably a million dollars in lumber in there well you know that's how it goes sometimes let's get out from under this board i don't want to loiter around here that's just ultimately dangerous well guys we're going to take a break a second one more time and i'm going to go through all of this to try to find a date we have not found anything with a confirmed date on it i really would like to know what the construction of this mine was so i'm just going to set the camera right here there we go and we're going to look around for a bit [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] all right well that was a lot of fun we took about maybe 10 15 minutes to thoroughly go through this entire area and let me show you what we found all right first thing down here on the floor randy hold that bag up and so that everybody can see what it says it's cal cal does that say sealant calcium cementing it's a super strength gypsum and now i know we have a lot of um retired miners in the crowd what did they use this for was that used to pack the hole after they put the dynamite in prior to a blast okay next then we got then i found this kerosene tin hiding behind that board and when i look down inside look at what we found right down in there reach it reach in and grab it randy don't worry about those don't worry about them brown recluses they don't have that sharp jagged edge they don't can they don't eat much [Music] we found a string piece and a plum bar a plum bob look at that look at yep there's a plum bob and all that old hardware in there yep and the bottom it was filled with uh those old square spikes for the rails but that's pretty darn cool an old plum bob then working our way up this direction we found some more stuff this is this is the super cool randy found it so i have to give him the booby prize read what it says randy i'm not sure exactly but it looks like mine closed october 29th 1909 unless that's an eight can you zoom in on that could that be an eight let me see no that's a zero it looks like a zero to me yep that's a zero crew looks like cj flock pete johnson i'm not sure about this a mel a-m-e-l maybe uh statswad he met some german name leonard something patern another guy named flock i never would have guessed in a million years i'm going to try turning these two lights off and i'm going to zoom in a little bit closer here without getting a bunch of shadows in it maybe you can see it right there yeah you've got 10 years off never in a million years would i have guessed this mine would have closed in 1909 now i thought it was a lot newer than that because of all of the nails we were seeing were in such good shape and they were still shiny okay now let's head off this direction show them all the other fun stuff we found okay clamor over all this debris okay i found uh the handle of what could have came off of a shovel or a hammer right there looks handmade yep it could be it could be a tamping stick and then another cool find randy found it we got some uh some old wax paper probably dynamite wrapping paper that's got advertisements on it from goldfield nevada i believe wood sullivan company the stone front hardware plumbing and tinning builders hardware 10 enameler and the address was 238 main street goldfield nevada so we'll try to look that place up and see what it looked like back in the day yeah i'll see if i can't find a picture for you guys of 238 main street goldfield nevada and if what that business looked like back in 1909 maurice joseph sullivan born december 7th 1884 and passed away august 9th 1953 sullivan moved to goldfield nevada in 1906 where he worked as a sales representative and manager for a company that provided hardware and other supplies for gold miners and mining companies he eventually became the principal owner of the wood sullivan hardware company and was an investor in several mining ventures while living in goldfield he served on the town board as president of the local chamber of commerce and as president of the local volunteer fire department then down here on the floor we found a cardboard box with the packing list still enclosed and what do we got there ready nothing too old somebody probably out here prospecting later on june 11 1980 1980 and it says button it's either button bats or button bags yeah it looks like uh either an a or part of an ots is what it looks like and what we're guessing is that's the case that these sample bags came in hold up one of those sample bags randy real quick right there that's a sample bag made out of a tyvek type material yeah plastic fiber very strong that's that's probably what that was um was there anything else i think that was it randy yeah i think that's all we found other than the paint brushes over here there was a cool old natural fiber rope might be hemp probably happen could be from the early days nope that is yeah that's it okay well we're going to start working our way back up 400 feet of ladders again and uh just to give you one last look of what that looks like from this perspective take a look right up there oh trying to hold the camera still as possible look at that little button of light up there oh my gosh let's just hope i don't have a heart attack on the way back up randy [Laughter] yeah all right are you ready for this are you ready for this climb boy oh boy all right let's get after it okay guys unless something cool happens or we i see something neat or or randy gets one of his feet caught on a nail i'll see you back topside six hours later groundhog day [Laughter] ah well guys thanks for coming along on this fantastic adventure and i'll see you next weekend take care everybody bye-bye [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Abandoned and Forgotten Places

Views: 34,953

Rating: 4.9620981 out of 5

Keywords: A&FP, Abandoned, Forgotten, Places, Mine, Mines, Tunnel, Exploring, Adventure, Hiking, Artifacts, Antiques, Geology, Prospecting, Gold, Silver, Quartz, Dynamite, Blasting, Adit, Gly, Bobbie, Quackers, Gly Coolness, Old Bob, Old Mine, Old Building, Gold Mine, Ghost Town, Abandoned Mine, Abandoned Mines, Abandoned Place, Abandoned Places, Forgotten Place, Forgotten Places, Mine Exploring, Abandoned Mine Exploring, Exploring Abandoned Mines, Abandoned and Forgotten Places, Abandoned & Forgotten Places

Id: LnaAcnt6el0

Length: 45min 23sec (2723 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021