Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
It was a good hike to get down to the bottom of the canyon and then back out, but that quartz vein in this abandoned gold mine, along with the views of the river, made it worth it… We measured the quartz vein at its thickest points and came away with measurements up to seven feet across! That is quite a vein and I would be quite curious to know what the assay results or production was. The “blob of quartz” (for lack of a better description) seemed to be very concentrated. In other words, the miners hit that particular spot very hard – running up and down on it over multiple levels – but at no point did they drift off for more than a couple of hundred feet from the portal. For something that significant, I would have expected to see more exploratory work done by the miners to see if they could pick up the vein again. This is an older mine and so the old timers would not have had access to modern core drilling. That’s why you see a lot more exploratory drifting in the older mining operations.
There wasn’t a lot to be found on the history of this mine. The oldest report that I found dated back to the 1890s, but it only mentions the mine without providing any details. And, of course, just because the report is from the 1890s doesn’t mean that the mine is. It could be decades older…
Obviously, this is the classic story we see of a mine being worked and abandoned over and over again.
*****
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.
Thanks for watching!
*****
Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.
These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever.
I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
#ExploringAbandonedMines
#MineExploring
#AbandonedMines
#UndergroundMineExploring
It was a good hike to get down to the bottom of the canyon and then back out, but that quartz vein in this abandoned gold mine, along with the views of the river, made it worth it… We measured the quartz vein at its thickest points and came away with measurements up to seven feet across! That is quite a vein and I would be quite curious to know what the assay results or production was. The “blob of quartz” (for lack of a better description) seemed to be very concentrated. In other words, the miners hit that particular spot very hard – running up and down on it over multiple levels – but at no point did they drift off for more than a couple of hundred feet from the portal. For something that significant, I would have expected to see more exploratory work done by the miners to see if they could pick up the vein again. This is an older mine and so the old timers would not have had access to modern core drilling. That’s why you see a lot more exploratory drifting in the older mining operations.
There wasn’t a lot to be found on the history of this mine. The oldest report that I found dated back to the 1890s, but it only mentions the mine without providing any details. And, of course, just because the report is from the 1890s doesn’t mean that the mine is. It could be decades older…
Obviously, this is the classic story we see of a mine being worked and abandoned over and over again.
*****
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.
Thanks for watching!
*****
Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.
These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever.
I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
#ExploringAbandonedMines
#MineExploring
#AbandonedMines
#UndergroundMineExploring
