Exploring The Disappearing Continental Mine - Part 1 of 2

It is difficult to go wrong with abandoned tungsten mines and this one proved to be no exception to our prior experiences... As with much of Nevada, it was silver that brought early prospectors and miners to this mining district in the 1860s. However, the rich silver ore eventually ran out and activity tapered off until World War I when tungsten deposits were discovered here. It was not until large deposits were discovered in the 1930s though that the mining of the tungsten began on a significant scale. World War II created an insatiable demand for tungsten and that period is when this particular mine was started. Operations continued here for more than a decade until falling tungsten prices in the late 1950s caused the mining operation to be abandoned.

I didn’t have the perception that this mine was particularly sketchy when I was underground shooting it, but looking at it while I was editing the video, I realized I had forgotten how many caved sections there were. We have been in tungsten mines older than this one where there is scarcely a pebble out of place. So, it is curious that this mine was in such rough shape. Really, it seems that almost all of the stopes have collapsed to varying degrees. And given the number of (and the size of) the ore chutes it seems fairly safe to assume that the hill above the haulage adit was practically hollowed out.

In the second of the two videos at this mine, we’ll explore that parallel side that we shadowed (and caught occasional glimpses of) on the route I took to the left in this first video.

My exploring buddy on this trip was Mines of the West and he has his own mine exploring channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/GramVideos95

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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really does make a difference…

You can click here for the full playlist of abandoned mines: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

Thanks for watching!

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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 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 The Disappearing Continental Mine - Part 1 of 2 канала TVR Exploring