The Power Of A Giant Mining Operation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ย. 2023
- The "power" in this title is a reference to the evidence of modern mining left behind at this site… Specifically, I’m referring to the building-sized slabs of rock that have smashed across the workings of the abandoned mine, to the tremendous cavities left behind in the earth and to the sheer, incredible quantity of rock moved… Modern pit mines simply haul everything away to neat piles and so, aside from the massive holes in the ground, I think many fail to appreciate the sheer destructive power of modern mining. Similarly, when mining takes place underground, it is difficult to see more than pieces of the puzzle and it is often difficult to appreciate the scale of what has been done. Consider, for example, some of the mine shafts that we have roped down. When I shine my light down a shaft, it just looks like a black hole. However, we have descended for more than 1,000 feet in some mines. That’s the equivalent of a skyscraper higher than 100 stories! That may seem abstract, but look up at a skyscraper of that height the next time you’re in a city and ask yourself if that scale is even remotely conveyed in the videos that I show of such mines.
This mine from the 1950s is unique in that it is from an era of transition from historic mining methods to modern mining. Thus, we see the ravaged landscape left behind and a glimpse of the destructive potential of mining without it being cleaned up and sanitized as modern mines (at least in jurisdictions like the U.S. and Europe) are. Yes, I know, the hydraulic mining of the past moved massive quantities of gravel and dirt and certainly showed us the destructive potential within humanity. However, hydraulic mining was washing away ancient river channels and wasn’t smashing through solid rock as was done at this mine. It didn’t toss building-sized slabs of rock around as if they were nothing and, at least to me, doesn’t showcase the same raw force. Haha, maybe you had to have been there…
In case it was not possible to tell from the geology, this was an iron mining operation. As I mentioned above, the work seen in this video was done in the 1950s. There is some suggestion in the records of minor work being done in the area back to the early 1900s (or possibly even earlier) to extract copper and lead. However, we saw no evidence of this and I suspect that any such workings were devoured by the larger iron mining operations later. Various companies have come out and kicked rocks at this site and there has even been some surface drilling done for sampling, but no one has yet been inspired to bring this mine back into production.
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You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6
Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.
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 colorful niche of our history is gone forever.
I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
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The dump truck looked like an early 1950's Studebaker
Old straight 8 cylinder beast. Very cool to see it that intact. Squat for horsepower, but made enough torque to pull a house out of the ground. Pretty much just put it into 3rd gear and drive around town all day without touching the shift lever.
I was going to mention the straight eight. Interesting
The battery with the 3 caps is a 6 volt battery, most vehicles changed to 12 volts in the mid 50's, (6 caps)
G'day from Australia Justin. Monster site and great exploring. Love to know the tonnage removed.
Highly relatable. If I got a nickel every time I find myself teetering precariously on the sides of an absurd waste dump slope or scree field in the middle of nowhere... maybe I could afford to make better life decisions?
You’d have a pocket full of nickels?
Yea that view from the cedar sides bunk houses would make it worth the dangerous job of mining.
A straight eight? Damn, don't see those out in the field much. Awesome.
Forgot to mention Buick is the only domestic manufacturer I'm aware of that had an OHV straight 8 in a passenger car.
Thank you for bringing me along.
I probably would've when I was a kid but as a middle aged man i hate seeing old abandoned trucks and cars shot full of holes.....like just damn man! damn!
Good to see you guys heading out in the desert once in a while !
Justin- Just a safety thing, you guys might want to obtain some long walking sticks and beat the brush ahead of you. The vibration will get the way cleared for you guys keep you from getting bit. Out where you are, that's a long haul to a hospital. Keep it safe, and keep up the good work. This looked like a fun one for you guys.
stick with a tennis ball on the end, you can distract their strike, they will go for the ball waved in their direction
Hello again sir, not watched the video yet but reminded me to ask a wee favour. I don't often request things from guys like yourself but do you think you could spent perhaps a minute more filming the old vehicles whenever you come across them? I love old abandoned vehicles as much as I do mines. Thank you Sir,
Mr T from Scotland
You found a 1950 buick Special with the 248 ci 8 cylinder. This year has a really cool waterfall grill. Buicks seem to be the miners car of choice! I remember the one you showed inside a recent mine explore powering some equipment.
Big operation for sure! Along with the size and scope come failures of equal proportions. What a sight! This entire operation and it's failures are a first for me. Wow! Thanks Justin and Crew!
Great explore, I love the old cars and buildings...the first truck you showed was a 50's Jeep product...the last car was, I believe, a Buick. The clues were the straight 8 cylinder engine and the 3 holes down the sides of the hood...Buick was big on "portholes" and they carried the theme for decades. Straight 8's were rare from Detroit.
I could not believe the size of the workings inside. I think the last time you showed us one that large was when you were in Europe. Your friend came up with an excellent observation concerning fears of cave ins etc.
Watch for an email, Justin...with be reaching out tomorrow morning.
Hi Justin, the mine itself was pretty interesting as you don't see the track running out of side drifts to the mainline very much, pretty cool.
The old car you popped the hood on was that a straight eight engine ?? I love the surrounding landscape, there were some amazing views to
be had from those old buildings. Thank you for sharing, much love. xx
You guys work hard to bring us these videos. Much appreciated by all of us.👍
The bullet holes in the old truck just made the screenshot you mentioned, even better.
Great description by the way…I like your writing style!
0:31 That's a forward-control Jeep, and someone absolutely will take it in that condition, they're becoming that rare.
You are very lucky to have friends to do this with. Sure wish i did. Im surprised there wasnt more underground workings despite the collpases. Very cool regardless. Thanks again.
Good afternoon from Southeast South Dakota
Very cool, love the scenery with the old buildings and cars
Very impressive location Justin. It would be nice to know The extent of workings underground there, and the find out where all that water is coming from shame it’s all collapsed
My mine experience doesn't go beyond the mother load starring Charlton Heston, compared to the movie, this is a lot better 😊
That's one movie I've never seen and I thought that I seen all his movies!
Thank you I'm going to have to watch it!
those left hand track spurs may have had boggers on them, collecting from the bottom of ore passes, or raises and dumping in the ore trucks, hence the very large utility pipes, running eimco 12B'S use a lot of air, if you are drilling at the same time, I could imagine them running back and forward filling the trucks
Not the sketchiest mine I've seen you guys in ;)
Awesome man🤩 what work to show us all the views . Thanks always to you and the team!
Great video as always. We were able to explore this site in 2018. I'm surprised the upper shop building is still standing. It was leaning pretty hard when we were there.
If you look at those railroad ties from the building you might find a date nail in one of them. They would be about a half inch diameter head with the last two digits of the year the tie was laid. 5:37
34:00 You don't see straight 8's very often
In the view of the 1st landing with the creek I was thinking "wow that landscape is beautiful I bet it's full of snakes" and then you said exactly that.
Love the Buick 8
If that was a gold mine those failed stops piles would make you rich
Interesting mine and some nice self made tools, a lot off collapsing going on in there intentional or not, nice explore Justin.
I wonder if they had muckers running into those stopes with the weird raised side rails. not really a bad idea... I just don't know why you would do that and not just have ore chutes
My first thought was cart to cart, but there's not enough space to dump from the "upper" side to the lower side
7:14 Or is it a rock the size of a large rock?
Didn’t see any signs of electricity. Wonder if they used draft horses to pull those 3 ton cars? Huge mine! That last car may have been a 48 Buick.
pretty amazing relics!! Great explore👍👍
That sure looks a lot like Nevada. Beautiful scenery !
justin costco in reno and sparks has dji drones for 420. its the new mini 3 but not the pro. dude i have the 2and the new one with the bigger battery stqyed out for 40 minutes. my buddy has it. i went through all 3 of my batts trying to keep up. you need one its game changing for mine exploring.
very cool !! great video guys .
The car is a 48 Buick road master. Its not a cheap business running a mine and you'd never know profitable it's going to be until it is or isnt... Compressors, water pumps, generators, accommodation for everyone and food. Fuel bills. Pay, and transport because these mines are out in the middle of nowhere. The bills would be never ending. You'd have to have a good accountant to keep track of the costs and then you may have a great assay showing the area is full of the minerals, make 30 ft into the mine and the ore dries up.
Late 40's to early 50's Buick with a 8 cylinder engine. 6 volt system.
Great video, lot of work in the mine
Cool car that battery was neat to see 👀 👌
Notification squad cant wait for this one love what you do 👍
Think I explored an area that was very similar to this, the buildings looked so familiar. Great documentation!
that looked like an old straight eight engine. olds or buick
Some huge workings!
Curious to know if you found the source of the water? Spring or adit?
Thanks for sharing 🇨🇦
You found water in the desert, if drinkable, all kinds of wildlife will be in the area around it, so right away need to keep an extra eye out for rattlers and such. Think you said you roused some? Wished you had gotten some on camera. That old car looked 50's, but the old truck with wood bed looks like 30's-40's. Would have been fun to see if there was anything in the cars trunk. Bet some rebuilders on u-tubes could get them back to life, if they could get them hauled out of there! Even still have the engines in them! Looked like some great scenery. Thanks for taking us along.
Cool video thanks for sharing you guys are awesome
Wow man there's a lot of widow makers in that mine! I don't know if id go into that one with those huge rocks just barely hanging on!!!!
2:30 Maybe it's Bigfoot!?!
Cool old straight 8 in that car.
That car was a 40’s Buick. Interesting battery in the older Buicks but the very interesting detail is those had an inline 8 cylinder engine.
A 3 cell 6v battery in the car
That was quite a spacious mine, I liked that straight eight Buick.
Nice. Bet the old Buick straight 8 would fire off again with a bit of work, particularly as the hood was down. Some penetrant oil to unfreeze the pistons, check the plugs, rebuild the carb. That's if there're no bullet holes in the block...
Hi Justin Great video, was this in the Cerra gordo area???
Looks like the truck in thumbnail was being used as target practice.
The first thing I thought of when you showed that mountain side that seemed collapsed was the "Frank Slide" in Alberta which was presumed a failure of the entire mountain due in part to coal mining.
Straight 8 Buick. 6 volt battery.
Those series of right angled sets of rails are not raises or collapsed stopes, they are draw points for a shrinkage stope. Jim, retired mining engineer 🇬🇧👍😎
@7:28 This totally destroys our expectations of the jet pack lift off, anti-gravity boots and the I Dream of Jeannie blinky transportation we thought you employed on all your explores. Expectations,, totally destroyed....
Actually the majority of the sheet metal looks pretty nice to someone looking for pieces of the models like those there, with the exception of the dump truck someone decided to use as a target to see how big of a hole they could blow through it from side to side, but even then if someone was in need of a certain place of it the desert is the best place to store something long term as the government does with all the aircraft and other vehicles moth balled as they call it.
As the old saying goes one man's junk is another man's treasure.
Even the straight eight engine block is possibly still salvageable if water hasn't gotten into the cylinders, are if it wasn't ruined by whoever left it sitting there.
I've often wondered about why a lot of the vehicles, and even the pieces of equipment are just abandoned where it was when they decided to up and leave.
I can somewhat understand the heavy equipment and such inside the mines.
But they typically take that as far as hoist systems and such most times, yet they'll abandon whole tram ways, and processing equipment that are worth vast sums of money as if it were just empty tin cans littering the mountain sides.
Are like the train, and it's tender in Alaska, but then there's whole train engines, and all the cars it was pulling scattered across the continent from one end to the other in random places to this day.
Another great adventure gentlemen, and as always I thank y'all for the guided ride along with y'all.
Be safe, and stay well.
Looking forward to the next adventure that is coming soon.
Wow i figure that truck was just going to be a shell but actually it looks like it's savable!!!
That's a fantastic place to get away from it all with that stream you could have all the electricity that you need!!!
I wonder if it's for sale???
Hello great explore and lots of crumbling rock. But got a glimse of some thing not seen before at a mining camp? At 36.seen a IRONING BOARD 36:07 mounted on the wall way up at the mine .Thats a 1st🤔⛏️
Great video as always. Lovely place. I find it amazing with remote America how everything seems to have been shot up with shotgun pellets. What is the obsession with shooting everything??
What were they after besides gold ?? Really big size tunnel for some reason???
I had NO idea they did underground mining for iron! Do you have any idea what the iron-containing mineral was?
Look up the old iorn mines around Birmingham, Alabama, there everywhere around that area.
They even run under the expressway near the airport, and several other parts of town.
Everyone always thinks of all the steel mills, and iorn works of being mainly up north, but up until the late 80's I believe the surrounding area was known as Smoky Town, due to all the mills, and furnaces there.
They also dug many many tons of coal from that same area.
There's a couple TH-cam channels that work together exploring all the old mines they can safely get into.
Dates way back into the days they used mules to haul the oar up the main haulage, and they typically never left the underground once they were taken down, and put to work inside the mines.
Also back during the days alcohol was illegal, there's lots of evidence that boot leggers brewed shine down inside the mines as well that they're still finding relics leftover from those days.
Hopefully this was of some interest to you, and you look into it further if you're so inclined.
Sorry I don't remember the names of the channels there that are into that bit of local history, and the older gentleman is very good on his research as Justin is.
The only difference is that Justin not only gives a running monolog as he goes through the mines, but he does an excellent job of giving a written description that is top shelf.
The older gentleman around Birmingham gives a very descriptive verbal narrative of what he knows, but he does insert old photographs if he's got access to them.
Seems a lot of money was spent to get that mine working and labor 😢
@Justin- Just curious, do you guys know what type of minerals were mined here? Was this one Gold, Silver, Tungsten...
It was iron. Assuming that we know, I always put that information in the description below the videos...
Where is this? Almost looks like Mexico, possibly Souther Arizona.
Someday your going to find a deep underground Alien base....
What is the object in the sky between 35:00 and 35:05? When the camera moves, it remains in the same place.
looks like lens flare. it moves as he pans.
moon
sweet
Bigfoot was working that mine!!!
Is this in California?
It's in Nevada.
No snake chaps?
I don't understand the right hand rule
The old car was a Buick straight eight cylinder, 6 volt electrical system, about 1950 vintage. One step below GM's top of the line Caddy, for the up and comer who isn't quite Cadillac grade yet. Must have been a fairly decent road into there back then, as those old turds would get stuck pretty easily. This was quite the operation in its' heyday, would love to see pictures of the operation then.
Mining may come back after the next depression and recession
Since prices will be at the lowest levels ever again
Can’t see any one putting money in mining now 😢
@ 32:40
I bet the remains of Jimmy Hoffa are in the trunk of that car!
You all need to Wear Snake Boots protection to the Knee's