Into The Depths Of The Florence Mine

My interest in the Florence Mine in Goldfield, Nevada was piqued when I saw historical photographs of it and then learned that the mine shaft and surface buildings were still intact today… However, I was not optimistic about visiting when I saw that it was on private property. Nevertheless, a friend had the contact information for the owner, Jon Aurich, and so I figured I had nothing to lose by giving him a call and requesting permission to visit the Florence Mine. To my surprise, he agreed to a visit and arranged for his son, James, to show us around and to take us underground.

The Florence Mine was primarily a gold mine. However, it also produced silver, copper, zinc and a handful of other metals. According to the reports I have seen, the ore from the mine was composed of chalcopyrite, bismuthinite and famatinite.

You’ve likely already gathered that a mine complex of this size was not built for fun, but because the owners were pulling out a lot of gold. Supposedly, some of the assays came back at over 2,000 ounces per ton from particularly rich pockets! Officially, the Florence Mine produced more than nine million dollars worth of gold. However, this was when gold was fixed at a price of $20.67 per ounce. At today’s prices, that nine million dollars of gold would be worth almost a billion dollars. That’s one rich mine, to be sure.

Coincidentally, Jeff Williams visited the Florence Mine a day after us and also released a video on this historic gold mine. After speaking to Jeff and seeing his video, I thought that our two videos would complement each other as he went more into the history and the geology than I did, while I went deeper into the mine. So, I’m releasing this video shortly after his in order to show some different sides of the Florence. After all, my primary goal with this is to document these historical sites.

Jeff’s video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdQTyBfnZFQ

And his buddy, Outdoor Adventures TV, was also with him and released her
video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUQcFbEKto

When I was editing my video, I realized that my comment about what is below the fifth level was not entirely clear. There is, in fact, water somewhere down there at a depth of around 4-500 feet. The ladders are mostly gone between the fifth and sixth level though and so it is not accessible without ropes (which we did not have on this trip). However, a friend of mine went as far as possible down the ladders and said that they reached a point where the shaft station at the sixth level was visible and had several ore cars on it. So, this would definitely seem one that is worth coming back to with the proper ropes and gear! Unfortunately, that is right around the water level. So, there is a good possibility that one cannot go farther than the sixth level or even that the sixth level is flooded at certain times of the year.

Imagine the mining artifacts that must be under that dark water though… The timber supports that are underwater (and stay underwater) would actually be preserved quite well. It is the timber supports that are damp that will rot the most quickly. So, somewhat ironically, it may be the inaccessible, flooded sections of this mine that survive for the longest period of time. It would be fantastic to see the mine pumped out in order to map and explore the lower levels, but I highly doubt that that is in the budget.

For the sake of brevity - and because the wind noise made the audio on the surface terrible - I did not include much of the historical buildings of the Florence Mine or the Rustler # 2 Mine next door. However, it is worth noting that these mines still have their original buildings and equipment, which is a rarity these days. It isn’t just the hoist house that I showed you… There is also the mill, machine shop, blacksmith, carpenter’s shop, the hoist house for the Rustler # 2 and one of the first wood-framed houses in Goldfield.

You can learn more about the history of the Florence Mine from the Goldfield Historical Society’s website here:

http://www.goldfieldhistoricalsociety.com/the-florence-mine/

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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so I’d encourage you to adjust your settings to the highest quality if it is not done automatically.

You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

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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…

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.

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Видео Into The Depths Of The Florence Mine канала TVR Exploring