Treasure Hunting Along The Famous Cerro Gordo Tramway

yes indeed we have yet another artifact that i wish i could take back to cerrogordo i mean think about how crazy it must have been for a miner to take a tram back up the hill folks we are on a treasure hunting bonanza today [Music] good morning welcome to sara gordo california that trestle you see behind me is part of an old tramway system that brought 500 million dollars of minerals out of this town or we get loaded into buckets behind me and sent to keeler nine miles below and connecting those two points is a cable and today i'm gonna walk the entirety of that cable up and over mountains through valleys even through the desert wherever that cable goes i'm gonna go and my hope is somewhere along the way i can find relics from the past to bring back to our museum and there's stories of ore falling out of buckets as it would sway i mean there's even a story of a miner who wrote a bucket back from keo to sarah gordo stood up too close to a junction and lost his head now i'm not looking for any skulls today but i am hoping to find some cool things it's gonna be a really long walk so i gotta get going but follow along and let's see what's out there so the trainway started up there at the trestle that i was sitting under and the first station used to be right here so right below the current chapel you can see some of the old wire right there there's a station here that supported the cable and then another one right over there if you look on that hill you can see a little notch right about there and that notch was the next station and the ones near town are disassembled in the 60s because they sold off some of the wood but as you go further over the mountains and you start hiking down the wood was much more inaccessible and so the majority of it is still there so today what i'm gonna do is start walking and kind of just follow the cable exactly all the way down into keillor in hopes to find some interesting relics from the past [Music] all right welcome to the first station along the tramway as you can see town is just back there not too far and that little notch we saw in the hillside is right here and you can already see the cable so the goal today is let the cable be our guiding light wherever this cable goes i'm going to go and so far that's meant i can walk along the road but it's about to get very steep and hilly so what i'm going to do here is just poke around a little bit see if i can find some stuff it's a beautiful time of the day already and look at this it's hard to beat you can see sunrise and sunset over this valley today to me every part of this is interesting you know every part of this is sarah gordo's history you know from the guy that nailed in this wood to whoever left that can over there so i'm hoping today to find a few artifacts to bring back to the museum that way i can better tell the story of cerro gordo and of the tram stations you know imagine the undertaking to bring this all the way from cerro gordo up and all over all these hills all the way down to keilor and right here it probably doesn't seem too impressive having these big planks of wood but this thing just goes over peaks and valleys that are super steep and so to me it's an incredible feat for humans looks like we've got some minds along the way so that'll be fun a little bonus mine exploration and i'm excited yeah just to learn more about the tram the land and any of the people that worked both of those things so let's explore around a little bit see if we can't find an early uh treasure this is cool they took like an old tobacco tin put this thing to obviously like hold it over maybe their belt to hold something in it either way pretty sweet well well well what do we have here and you know what i say don't tempt me with a good mind let's give it a little bit of a look not not a lot just a little another day's about the tramway but let's give it a little shot it doesn't just immediately end so that's a good thing let me go back a little ways there's some bedding down there which is terrifying because it could mean that an animal has chosen to make this their home [Music] so yep nada whoa that's trippy hand hewn look at that ew a lot of rap poop all right this guy [Music] here ah just getting into the sun so that'll make this wind a little bit better than the temperature i had i had lost the cable for a little bit but it appears i'm back on track there it is now it's headed back down and it'll head back up oh there you go you see that far the distance there's the tran is another transfer station hopefully my boot makes it here's the here's the thing don't buy boots off amazon it happened within a week of having them i duct taped it didn't work don't blame that on the duct tape though i'm playing that on the boot [Music] my point of reference is gonna be that transfer station up on that hill so i'm just gonna walk straight along [Music] ah now this is getting interesting you can see right here there's a little structure it seems we made a clay or stone i'm wondering if this is one of the old mexican smelters so prior to it being a full-blown mining town with the most recent technology there's these mexican smelters that i've heard rumors of and seen photos of and that might be it and look down there there's a campsite there there's obviously some old buildings there looks to be water tanks over there really old falling down and then pick up the tram back over there this looks like a ripe area for some treasure yeah this is one of these old mexican smelters so this is probably it's pretty the town founding so 1865 you figured this is like 1860ish so 160 years ago it's incredible it's just like prime metal detecting area because i always think like where would people sit you know if they just want to take a break they probably want to sit on peaks and by trees and so it seems if you're looking for a treasure that fell out of people's pockets around these trees it would be interesting because they used to probably be a third of that size when this is active and now they're like this like that looks like a perfect viewpoint so if i was tired and i wanted to look over the valley i would sit by those two trees so i'm gonna look over there see what's there and then poke around over here as well so i did a little searching and i found some things this and then this this is a button as you can see if you look closely levi strauss and co that's it that's it i was so excited and i dug and dug and not yet but that's crazy that's as close as i've ever been that just proves the theory that they were in fact here and that the search is not in vain so that pumps me up i mean the rest of this hunt down this tramway i mean who knows here's a fun game so i found a tobacco tin already how many of these do you think i want to find today you guys guess below and you're right i will send you one look at all this stuff it's incredible like this thing is a piece of the tramway history and it's a piece of cerros gordo's history you know this thing helped bring millions and millions of dollars with the ore down there but the issue that i can foresee happening already is that any of this stuff that i find it's pretty far from any road like i'm a good hiking already and i'm gonna go even further like this boom old ore bucket see that that's the scrap of the bucket there it would hang from the wire up there but like how do i get any of this stuff from you know miles away from any road all the way back up to cerro gordo i mean i can't even lift that thing up you know i think i might do i have my in reach with me i'm going to track the geo of where all this stuff is so in the future [Music] if we develop a plan of how to get it and there's enough stuff i can't even get my razor here like a polaris an off-road vehicle maybe up the wash if i walk it but anyways that's a good problem to have if i have a problem of how to get treasure home that means treasure's been found that's beautiful look at that look at these like gears at the bottom so i don't know if it was for water or like refining something you know sifting through something dang what a view though huh oh it's gonna be a good day when i really think about something like the tramway what i think about is all the people that played a role in bringing it to life you know it's easy to see the rusted cable on the side of our road and you know not think twice about it but it's worth thinking about how big of a feat it was back in the day you know this was like a marvel of engineering at the time it allowed orr to be brought in a straight line over all sorts of natural obstacles it saved so much money and time for these western minds i like to think about it wasn't just ore that they were transporting you know they're bringing supplies to town and even humans i mean think about how crazy it must have been for a miner to take a tram back up the hill you have to remember this was a time before commercial airplanes you know before anyone in the masses had a way to get a view thousands of feet off the ground that moved you know it must have been irresistible and almost seemed like being a bird and i try to remember coming back down and explaining to a friend you know what it feels like to be flying you know all these miners were well into their 20s and 30s for the very first time they went on these train buckets it must have been incredibly memorable and all sorts of people went into making that happen you know first they had to develop the wire rope that originally happened over in germany around 1830 it made its way over to the states and was first manufactured by john roebling in the 1940s he mainly used it to make suspension bridges and he'd go on to become famous for designing and building the brooklyn bridge in 1883. by about the 1850s the wire rope made the jump over to the mining industry mainly new jersey and it wasn't until kind of the post 1865 post-civil war western mining boom that came that there's a lot of this demand out west for an economic way to transport the ore and there's a guy here named andrew holody and he's the one that made the first real tramway for the west you know he started selling these systems out of san francisco and side note he become later known as the guy that created the san francisco cable car system and it wasn't until 1906 that a tramway made its way to cerro gordo and this was after the silver had had its heyday and it was before the zinc boom came but the first tramway was created and went from cerro gordo to some smelters just outside of keillor it broke a lot and the mine wasn't booming at the time so the first tram here was pretty much a failure and then after ld gordon arrived on the scene he found zinc and he'd hired lesion and sun's company to create a better tram all the way down to the keeler train station and it cost about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 1914 that's something like six million dollars in today's money and it helped turn sarah gordo back into a boom town this engineering this feat of its day made sarah gordo back into the largest producer of zinc in america and that probably wouldn't have happened without the tram system working at the time you know you have to think it took an army of men to construct this tram and an even bigger army to create the idea for this tramway to even exist you know from the metal rope to the shape of the stations you know there are so many individuals that all dedicated their life to creating something monumental in their day that really revolutionized a whole industry and i think today it's so easy to overlook and that's how it is with so many things you pass by every day and think nothing of it but for me what i try to do and what i get enjoyment out of is just to take a second and to get in the granular history of everything around you you know it has to just leave you in a sense of awe you know of the inspiration and the dedication you know today the tram might just look like rusted wire on the ground but back in the day it was someone's whole life's work and that's cool i mean to me at least and so you might not have a tramway around the next time you're in a city you know tilt your head up and look at those buildings all around you and try to think how many people played a role in bringing that thing to life and it has to inspire some type of aw some type of wonderment or at least it does for me okay all right here we are at the next tram station and now we're getting further away from any of the roads or any of the people so and i mean i'm sitting here now i'm afraid of heights and i can't imagine you see there's spans from there to there where you're eight 900 feet off the ground in this cable forget that in these little buckets and imagine being here and seeing your buddies that were working like oh hey jim how's it going yeah just headed back up oh man so i think what i'm hoping for for the rest of the walk is to find you know when these buckets were swinging you know from the wind some of the ore would drop out and then again if the drunk guys are up there who knows it was falling out of the buckets then or they're thrown out of the bucket so i think there's gonna be a lot of cool stuff down you can see in the further distance there it goes past the road and then it continues on off the road from here to the road i mean we're a couple miles from the road there and way over there so this is pretty far out there so hopefully there's some things to be found out here and uh i get to find them my second favorite story related to the tram is when ld gordon owned it his wife cornelia lived up there for a while and instead of having to go down to the store she would send her shopping list in one of the ore buckets all the way down to keeler which you can kind of see down there and then somebody there would know who it was from get the groceries and then later put them back on the bucket and send them all the way up all right i think it's time to continue the trek on it's beautiful here it's quite a spot oh we got a debate on our hands this is a copenhagen snuffton does this count towards the tobacco tinge for today i'm gonna give it a yes so that puts us two tens today a lot more hiking to do but a new one copenhagen [Music] two it appears now i get to walk back down hill then go back uphill and then back down and back up that's all right that's a beautiful day out here oh we got a ladder huh there must have been another like part of it here that they needed ladders to get up to and over the years it just collapsed oh look at that what is this another copenhagen snuff that brings the count to three since we're counting these three tobacco tens so far okay at the next little station and it's getting increasingly steep and that must be increasingly terrifying if you're on the actual tram because now it's even further off the ground but there's so much wood out here and as you may know i hate wasting wood so i see beams like that [Music] just wonder how to get them back whoa slipping and sliding oh cool there's an old uh glass thing from the power because the first tramway at cerro gordo wasn't powered and that one was about 1908 i think and i think power came to cerro gordo around 1913 so this was like 1914 so it was a powered tram although the majority of the work was done by gravity so gravity would bring the heavy buckets the full buckets down and obviously would bring the empty buckets back up and there was three breaks way back at cerro gordo and those brakes you know controlled it so it was manageable hey look at this this is one of the ore buckets the original ore buckets used to be dangling from this cable high above now what i anticipated happening earlier is happening meaning this thing's here i can dig it out that's no problem but this thing look at that right next to it some ore and slag right next to it so this thing i'll dig it out but we are very far from the road and have a pretty steep incline so i'm not getting here with any type of utv back in here with a car so how do i get this back to saragordo i mean this is like a true piece of cerego history right here a couple people come up here spend a day if you dedicate a day to it it'll be a workout but you can get it i mean the roads let's say the mood is three miles from here bring this three miles if you dedicate a day you're getting that back and if you get that back i mean you're recovering a amazing piece of servo's history so i need a couple people to come grab the other side of that let me just take it 100 yards at a time 50 yards of the time who cares pack a lunch pack a dinner and hike it back to the road and then it'll be no problem that's a goal before winter's up this will be gone this will be back at cerro gordo sitting in the museum sitting outside the museum well well well folks things are starting to heat up because if you look at this which i did a little experiment on this right here is what we call in the biz high grade this is galena this is what they're mining out here this is what must have fell out of bucket this thing is heavier than i can describe to you the reason i know it's galena it's soft and if you mash it open [Music] glitter city you see that that's that high grade [Music] that's awesome it's only didn't weigh like you know literal lead i put in my backpack but i'll keep a couple pieces is that oh i think right underneath that little cactus thing there's another piece of galena or at least something with a high copper content because it's bright green let's go check it out oh get out of the way bush oh yeah that's galena oh yeah [ __ ] cactus ow oh yes there it is even more glean a bunch fall out around here l d gordon probably wasn't too happy about this or falling out but look holy cow can you see how shiny that is it's just glitter city look at that i believe it's green from copper i want to bring this back because this is like a true specimen piece all right i'm breaking it you know we're doing a workout we're doing a workout i'm bringing that piece of galena back because i might not be able to again or buck it just correct it but i can bring some galena back i just got stabbed by cactus it's my fault i bumped into you my bad my bad oh yes [Applause] slipping and sliding on the shale they're basically like little razor blades look at that just don't want to fall it's hard not to start speeding up when there's an ore bucket to find oh damn it all right this is a specimen this is exactly what i was hoping to find from the jh montgomery machine code denver colorado usa that's exactly what the ones up in town say now imagine getting this thing back there i'm gonna need more than two people now i'm gonna need a whole crew and we're hiking it to the road way over there that is awesome so that's two on the day two or buckets there's a third right there let's not fall this time well wow look at this one this one's for like liquid of time some type oil water fuel look there's like a drain at the bottom i'm gonna put it up top but it could still hook into the same cable system that's laying right there goes on back up pretty steep little hike this is awesome this is number three number four is right there let's go investigate careful these boots blame jeff bezos look at this one this one's also just like almost perfect there's no no lettering on this one but still like remarkable shape it would be such a beautiful addition to the museum i mean now that we have like critical mass it makes the the effort much more worthwhile because there's four already and who knows now that it's just raining or buckets there might be even more the cable goes that way you get a crew let's get a crew of i don't know 10 15. like i said packed breakfast lunch and dinner staying true to my course following the line and it looks like down there in the joshua trees there's a bunch of old wood so imagine i was the next station over there and rocks are getting into my shoe because jeff bezos sold me bunk shoes so here you can see a pretty good example of how the tram worked so there is three different lines as you can see and this one is much thicker than this one so this center one was the track and it was stationary so it wasn't going anywhere and then the carts hooked into this thinner line over here are either brought up or down you know on either side of it and it's remarkable to see that here when it fell kind of fell in that order but that's how tram worked looks like we're coming upon another station here so i'll do some hunting around maybe we can find a couple more tins add to that tin count or hey who knows and now we're getting down into joshua tree territory joshua trees are beautiful i really like them but they don't grow above a certain elevation so if you're coming up cereal go to road you'll see them all the way and then suddenly they'll stop that's because they don't like growing that high i must continue the sun is telling me to hurry up this is supposed to be a day hike tequila which still looks awfully far away to me i don't know how it looks on camera but looks like i got a little bit of walking to do so i got to stop spending so much time looking at the dirt look at me look at that that's super cool joshua tree break look at that so you have to imagine when they downed the line this tree wasn't that big and now over the years it's grown up to be there ha that's awesome it's like a station fell over and tumbled down where did it tumble down it fell under the wash of course it did [Music] well just down from that what do we have three not one but three or buckets in the wash of course it's in the wash so that makes the count seven look at this thing it's got like i bet this is we're sitting in you see it's got like a place probably for your feet and maybe a bench to sit maybe this is the type of one that guys rolled back up on but seven ore buckets today down in the wash yes look at that wheel look how crazy that is that thing's probably eight feet tall and this thing over here it's getting super windy up here good luck getting this thing back to cerro gordo this stuff is crazy i've never seen this big of machinery preserved around here at least but again how would anybody get out of here but then that makes you think how they get this in here you know mules and stuff look at all these old levers look there's a break this is just so cool not too too much sunlight left and i'm probably just halfway if that tequila so we're gonna explore here real quick well if nothing else from this area we do have one update four count them four tobacco tins i believe bringing the count of tobacco tints to seven and orchards to seven so if you're following along at home if you guessed less than seven i'm sorry you're out of the game but this little pocket here i think this is where they threw all their trash but another interesting thing let me show you if we go over here written on the wheel of this thing where the cable was is the company that made it and back at cerro gordo i have something that says lesion and sons from st louis it requires a full day exploration but i don't have that time to do today so i'm going to move on continue on the tram but at least i found this i mean look at that wheel there it's so [Music] beautiful appears we're almost to another transfer station but what have we here super cool amazing all right onward to that peak update on the boot real bad well we are up here now you can see almost the other peaks over there let's get into that beautiful stage of the day where everything kind of glistens a little bit cloud coverage is nice it should make a nice sunset [Music] [Music] now this part of the trek has me going basically right on top of the road so the cable used to must have gone overhead of here and now it's come down here you see the bucket way up there i kind of walked up this ways and now i'm there and now i need to go to the very top but this looks extremely steep and quite treacherous i just hope i can get up there by the sunset it's kind of the final stop before keeler so i can get up there i can at least see the sunset it'll probably be dark by the time i get into keeler but almost there you can see the bucket much clearer now right there now we're there let's go and look at this right before the summit another war bucket and the ore buckets take the lead over the tobacco tens eight war buckets seven tobacco tins well it's almost a moment of truth this hike is serious it's all just slippery rocks so [Music] there she is what i've been hiking all this time for [Music] look at that sun coming right through it [Music] i'm winded this is beautiful oh come on [Music] now we're above that bucket [Music] [Music] just took a pretty good tumble coming down this it doesn't look steep but it is very steep actually and just all this jagged rock and i have a big bruise in my arm oh the sun's setting next station reached light's still holding out for now there appears to be another one right down there and then i'm just gonna walk that wash it's a nice ladder this is a big structure this must have been like a main terminal or something look at that the cable still wrapped around so cool yeah a couple water tank looking things huh that's cool oh wow look at that oh so cool let's get down in the wash 12 hours of wash walking [Music] cool onward tequila well with a little light that's left i still got my trail for now after all the sun sets there looking beautiful i mean look at that it's stunning don't you worry even in the night time i'm staying true to my quest so i'm going to say about that right say you're going to do something and you do it i said i'm bringing you guys tequila along the tram we're going to keeler along the tram just going to enter the railroad we'll make it eventually yep it's a proper dark now not like fake dark but actual dark and keeler doesn't look like he's getting any closer that's all right i'm following the track and it looks like i got another station in front of me and another drop off just what i didn't want well folks we made it to where the first tram stopped there was two trams at cerro gorillas history and the first one stopped here and just because the first tram stopped here including this creepy uh pit of death and a wall does not mean we're tequila yet still far in the distance and that's where the second tram the only train that worked stopped at the railroad so we're continuing our mission wasn't just to get here to get all the way to keeler and plus how would the mission end here camp out in the middle of nowhere so hey there it is there's the cable there's our guarding light oh folks almost there overstated but you may notice that there's zero lights in keeler at night and folks there you have it right at railroad avenue this is your railroad station feels like this video can turn into a horror movie real quick but that's the old railroad station trains used to pull in there you load it up leave out the back and if you're curious shoe did make it it's pretty much all gone now one more stop on this tour i have a trailer here in keeler i'll show you my crib so this is it home sweet home and keeler if you want to talk about horror films let me show you the inside cut my bed and got a lot of starts to a lot of projects the idea here is that people if they come with the wrong type of car and they can't take them all the way to cerro gordo then they can park here i want to create this into a lounge so imagine put like two or three couches here put a refrigerator in put some drinks in it and let people just hang out until i can come down and get them with my truck as you can see given all the financial strain of the town itself this is put on paws i mean there's a hole here if you look this goes right to the bottom that's the ground so it doesn't work nothing works no shower but one day this will be nice again and it's nice enough for tonight and it's better than sleeping outside so uh there you go oh the sheets are clean at least that's awesome oh boy ah and just like that i'm back at cerro gordo in my cozy little cabin and i'll tell you what nothing makes me appreciate this cabin more than spending a night in the trailer down in keither anyways the final count when all is said and done eight tens and i think nine r buckets that's pretty good i'll trade an orbic for a 10 all day but as i said before i will send one of these to one of you i will send you a message thank you for playing along during this video and thank you for watching the video you know the support just means everything to me you know being able to see this channel grow over the past 10 months has been one of my favorite things and each week getting to sit down and share these videos with people from all over the world is is truly special so i thank you deeply if you're not subscribed i hope you do i have a lot more of these coming if you have ideas for future videos throw them below other than that i hope this week you look around and appreciate the things big and small and all the personalities that went into creating them and until next week i'm signing out hope you guys have a good one you

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 586,399

Rating: 4.9802303 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: LpwaUU6sGFA

Length: 42min 36sec (2556 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/wildweeds]

every week i just want to pack up my life and ask brent if i can help up there more and more.

[u/mickkelo]

Great video. I found myself half an hour afterward following the cable on Google maps.

[u/Ilikefenderalot]

This looks like it could become an absolutely incredible hike if Brent can establish a proper route!

Also to Brent: Maybe consider the Vivobarefoot Tracker FG's or the Magna Trail boots as your next pair! They are super comfortable and are durable as all hell. I noticed Johnny wears the Magnas when you guys head into the mines!