Exploring Nevada's Abandoned Shoshone Mine

This was kind of an odd abandoned mine… I often wonder how the miners know to start punching into the mountain in a particular spot, but that is especially the case with this one. I can only imagine that a prospector spotted a promising vein on the surface near the top of the mountain and followed it down into the earth (which would be where that void above the ore chute apparently connected with the surface). Without knowing where the vein ties into the surface, I cannot say why the miners chose to construct an incredibly long haulage adit rather than some sort of tram system. Perhaps they were extremely optimistic about the size of the vein and thought a haulage adit would be needed for the capacity of rock and ore they expected to move? Perhaps there is some physical barrier that makes construction of a tram system an impossible undertaking? Perhaps the miners simply didn’t have a lot of experience? I have learned not to play armchair general and second guess those who were there though. So, it is only with some reluctance that I mention that last possibility.

With literally one ore chute in the entire mine, it is difficult to imagine that the miners involved in this project made a significant (if any) profit. The haulage adit they constructed was very long – far longer than is seen in the video as I had to edit much of it out in order to avoid putting you to sleep – and it would have been expensive and labor-intensive to burrow through the mountain like that. The drifts branching out around the ore chute tell me that the miners lost the vein they were following and were casting about trying to find it again or to locate a new one. Clearly, they were unsuccessful in doing so or this mine would be much larger than it is.

That ore bin and the trestle over it on the surface were visually appealing, no? As I said in the video, if it were not for the metal frame surrounding it, I’m sure that would have collapsed by now. And, by the way, if anyone recognizes the remains of that metal equipment I showed against the cliff near the top of the ore bin, I’d love to know what that was. In case it wasn’t possible to tell in the video, the ore bin is sitting in the middle of a wash. At one time, trucks or wagons would have been brought straight up the wash and had the ore loaded directly into them. We could see the remains of the road on the hike in and much of the road was on the bottom of the wash itself where gravel (perhaps derived from the waste rock?) had been spread out to form a very nice road bed. However, water rushing through the wash over the decades has obliterated the road and returned the wash to its natural state. Very few sections remained that were still smooth gravel and even someone with a dirt bike would likely find it impossible to make it up to the mine without dismounting and walking in.

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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. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.

So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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Видео Exploring Nevada's Abandoned Shoshone Mine канала TVR Exploring