Exploring A Remote Mine And Miner's Cabin In The Desert

Remote! This abandoned mine and miner’s cabin is WAY out in the Nevada desert. Come along with us on this adventure to see the treasures that can, fortunately, still be found hidden away in our world... Highway 50 running through Nevada is said to be “The Loneliest Road” in America. Well, to get to this abandoned mine, you have to turn off of the loneliest road and go down an even more lonely dirt road for many miles. Then, you have to turn off of that lonely dirt road onto another dirt road, that seems to be not much more than an animal trail, and go on that for several miles before finally arriving near enough to this mine to be able to walk up to it. Pretty lonely!

We are frequently amazed by the ability of the old time prospectors to locate promising mineral deposits in the most remote and inhospitable places. This mine proved to be no exception. I simply cannot imagine how the miners in the past decided to start running an adit at this site. Interestingly, they punched straight back for several hundred feet before the adit abruptly stops at a “T” junction. There was a small drift and stope on the left, but on the right (taking off at a sharp angle of 90 degrees from the adit we came in on) was another drift heading off deeper into the mountain. This drift continues for several hundred feet more before coming to a chamber where the miners created a fairly large stope and also pursued the ore down through the floor of the adit. Perhaps the bits of wood down in the small pit they created are what is left of a trestle that used to run across this spot? After making our way across the small pit, the drift meandered around until we came to a large ore chute leading up into what must be upper workings of a respectable size. In the video, you can see why I believe these may connect to the outside world. After the ore chute, the historic mine bends around some more before finally simply stopping at a rock face. I don’t know what encouraged the miners to suddenly branch off from the initial adit at the sharp right angle, but this was apparently a good call given the stopes and ore chute that indicate they took some sort of valuable mineral out of there.

The miner’s cabin did not have any type of road leading up to it. We continued hiking up the mountain above the mine in order to look for the presumed outside access to the upper workings that we saw extending up from the ore chute inside of the mine. We did not find the breach to the outside world (or the inside world depending on your perspective) that we were seeking, but the vegetation was fairly thick in the most likely areas. Forgive us, but we did not push too aggressively into some of these spots as we had no desire to be blindly thrashing our way through the thick brush only to take a tumble down a shaft or open stope.

Instead, we kept exploring up the mountain because we were enjoying the views and were curious about what might be in such an area that sees so very few humans. After hiking for a while, I noticed the remains of a very faint trail leading down a little side canyon or dry wash. I already knew that we were going to be hiking back down to the mine in the dark anyway, so I decided to follow the trail for a little ways. I soon discovered that the trail had been created by miners in the past as I came across the old miner’s cabin and the small prospect next to it. That was a real treat as, obviously, very few people know it is there and so it still had a large number of artifacts around, which allowed us to really understand what the lonely life of the miner there must have been like.

We hiked down in the dark and drove out in the dark (which wasn’t easy), but it was worth it to explore this mine and to see the forgotten miner’s cabin.

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Видео Exploring A Remote Mine And Miner's Cabin In The Desert канала TVR Exploring