The Castle Mine Part 1: Exploring the Upper Levels and Finding a Steam-Driven Hoist

The "Castle" Mine was a lead and silver mine, first discovered in 1875 by an old prospector known simply by the name Fox. The deposit was rich in high-grade ore, containing 101 to 293 ounces of silver per ton and up to 52% lead. Not long after its discovery, the mine was sold to a group of prominent businessmen and a mining company was formed. The small pockets of high-grade ore were widely spaced, so several thousand feet of cross-cuts, drifts, winzes, and raises were driven to discover more of these rich pockets. The ore was processed in a 10-stamp mill and two large furnaces. The "Castle” Mine was a big producer, yielding $1.9 million from 1875 to 1890. The mine also produced about $450,000 after 1890. This was mostly from the reprocessing of the slag piles and mine dumps.

As you’ll see in the video, this mine has a lot of long featureless drifts and cross-cuts. Thankfully, there’s a huge payoff for all this tunnel-walking. The reward is an underground hoist room containing a mine cage, a steam-powered winch, and a beautiful King No. 4 firebox. The only thing missing is the steam engine, but I’m not going to complain about this. I didn’t show this in the video, but the mine cage was held in place by its emergency stopping mechanism. There are two claw-like “dogs” that dig into the wooden guide rails when there’s no tension in the cable. Below the mine cage was a trapdoor, and below that was a winze plunging almost 500 ft. straight down. At the bottom of this there is an offset, and the winze continues down another 100 ft. or so to a lower adit. The reason there’s an offset may be due to the possibility that the miners were driving a raise and driving a winze to meet up in the middle. A small miscalculation at the beginning could’ve lead to disastrous results at the end. The whole set up certainly seems strange, and I’m still not entirely sure about the purpose of it all. It didn’t look like they were sending ore down, and the offset would’ve prevented an easy way of getting ore up. My hypothesis is that they were using it to transport miners between the upper and lower levels of the mine mine quickly. The miners would climb the 100 ft. to the offset on ladders, and then ride the cage the next 500 ft. This still seems problematic, as it would’ve probably been cheaper to ride burros up and down the mountain. Also, I’m sure there were camps by the upper and lower levels.

Next week I’ll be posting Part 2 of this exploration, which features the extensive lower adit. You’ll be able to see the bottom of the 600 ft. winze!

Also, a specially thanks to Cash, Cole, and Xavier for this great trip!

Видео The Castle Mine Part 1: Exploring the Upper Levels and Finding a Steam-Driven Hoist канала Forgotten Mining History