Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
We’re out at a remote and long-abandoned Nevada zinc mine this week. In this exploration, we follow a twisting, winding adit where the original ore car rail still snakes through the rock (an aesthetic that regular viewers will know that I love). Unlike straight, utilitarian tunnels, this adit bends and curves through limestone, giving a sense of how the miners followed the vein through solid stone.
Overhead, a hidden world reveals itself: a labyrinth of old stopes carved above the “back” of the adit, where the miners chased mineralized zones upward into the rock. It’s a reminder of how much of a mine’s story exists beyond what’s visible at eye level.
Along the way, we encounter historic carbide-lamp graffiti from (we presume) early mine explorers dating back to the early 1950s, including names like “Kathy Bell,” quietly preserved on the stone — personal echoes from an earlier era of underground exploration (I’ll bet that Kathy Bell and her friends would have been a fun group to hang out with)…
There’s a lot of great ranching and mining history that one passes to reach the location of this mine. Unfortunately, the mine closure teams also passed through this beautiful landscape and got to this mine before us. There were a number of other adits and shafts at this site, but most of them were destroyed. The closure teams used that toxic foam to seal off some of the workings (a horrible fate for the animals trapped inside when the mine is sealed) but used the more traditional gates on other workings. Fortunately for us, the local population do not seem to take kindly to these impositions on their mines and we frequently find that gated mines in this area have been “ungated” by the locals. The adit in this video was the “ungated” one at this mine. I wish that I could have shown you the rest of the underground workings, but we were too late for this one.
The mine was first worked in the early 1900s.
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You can view the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
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Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help with the many costs of exploring these abandoned mines. Thanks to their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. If you’d like to contribute, you can find me under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!
*****
Growing up in California’s Gold Rush Country made it easy to take all the history around us for granted. But abandoned mines face many threats—nature, vandals, scrappers, and government agencies. The prospectors and miners who once roamed these mountains and worked deep underground are fading into history as well.
That reality inspired us to start documenting as many ghost towns and abandoned mines as we can—before this colorful piece of our past is lost forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
We’re out at a remote and long-abandoned Nevada zinc mine this week. In this exploration, we follow a twisting, winding adit where the original ore car rail still snakes through the rock (an aesthetic that regular viewers will know that I love). Unlike straight, utilitarian tunnels, this adit bends and curves through limestone, giving a sense of how the miners followed the vein through solid stone.
Overhead, a hidden world reveals itself: a labyrinth of old stopes carved above the “back” of the adit, where the miners chased mineralized zones upward into the rock. It’s a reminder of how much of a mine’s story exists beyond what’s visible at eye level.
Along the way, we encounter historic carbide-lamp graffiti from (we presume) early mine explorers dating back to the early 1950s, including names like “Kathy Bell,” quietly preserved on the stone — personal echoes from an earlier era of underground exploration (I’ll bet that Kathy Bell and her friends would have been a fun group to hang out with)…
There’s a lot of great ranching and mining history that one passes to reach the location of this mine. Unfortunately, the mine closure teams also passed through this beautiful landscape and got to this mine before us. There were a number of other adits and shafts at this site, but most of them were destroyed. The closure teams used that toxic foam to seal off some of the workings (a horrible fate for the animals trapped inside when the mine is sealed) but used the more traditional gates on other workings. Fortunately for us, the local population do not seem to take kindly to these impositions on their mines and we frequently find that gated mines in this area have been “ungated” by the locals. The adit in this video was the “ungated” one at this mine. I wish that I could have shown you the rest of the underground workings, but we were too late for this one.
The mine was first worked in the early 1900s.
*****
You can view the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
*****
Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help with the many costs of exploring these abandoned mines. Thanks to their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. If you’d like to contribute, you can find me under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!
*****
Growing up in California’s Gold Rush Country made it easy to take all the history around us for granted. But abandoned mines face many threats—nature, vandals, scrappers, and government agencies. The prospectors and miners who once roamed these mountains and worked deep underground are fading into history as well.
That reality inspired us to start documenting as many ghost towns and abandoned mines as we can—before this colorful piece of our past is lost forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
