 Another cliffhanger. Look at all the mines over there. I'm using more mines. Good morning, YouTube. My next verse. Good morning. Tom and Julie here. Look at that portal right behind us. No, that's not where we're going. We have a special treat for you guys today. We're pretty excited about it. We're going to a mine that has more equipment than any that we've ever seen. It's a hiking only. It's about a two mile hike from here. And there's about 1,300 feet of elevation gain. So it's a bit of a hike. That's part of the reason it doesn't get visited very often. But I think you guys are really going to enjoy it. So stick around and let's go hiking. Since we've been to this mine before, we kind of know what we're in for. Wow, look at the views. That's the first peak of Death Valley on this hike. So this is a great single track hiking trail. The views of Death Valley are spectacular. It's a little windy today in places, so you're going to maybe get some wind noise. And I'm hoping by the time we get down to the mine, it's not too windy. Wow, just wow. What a view. Makes you feel mighty small. Wow, look at our trail down there. Here she comes. Just think of all the old men and women that worked these mines that hiked on these trails. This mine was mainly worked in 1935 and 1937. Anyway, we have a lot of respect for what they were able to achieve and the places they were able to get to. I probably couldn't carry their tools much less do the work they did. As you round this corner, this is what you see. The first part we're going to come to is the mining camp. We'll start there with our exploration. So on the far right over here is the outhouse. And just to the right of Julie is a smaller cabin. Then the main living quarters here is a 20 by 60 rock, walled, multi-room unit. Looks like this would have been a bedroom. There's a few bedrooms in there. Moving this way, it looks like there's an old, I don't know if that's a refrigerator right there. I think it has a gas, maybe a gas refrigerator in more sleeping areas. And further over here, this looks like the kitchen because there's a stove down there and a real refrigerator and a sink. See the refrigerator with the compressor and all that outside of it. Here's a round area, a platform with a rock foundation. I'm guessing this would have been a water tank for the camp, but I'm not sure. Here I am in the kitchen. More bed springs. This old stove with a couple of burners. Looks like a three burner plus a flat grill or griddle. This is a reliable brand. Here's the refrigerator. It's in pretty good shape still. Any ice cubes in there? It's a nice shape. That still works and everything. This is the front along the cabin area, camp quarters. Here's a cool shovel. Looks like it was either bent that way or made that way to dig in a narrow or trench. And there's a big chain gear down there. There's a sprocket. And a regular round shovel. Alright, let's go down and look at the mine itself. This looks like it's a water heater. Yep. And there's the propane for the cooking stove. So this is the main mine area right here. You can see there's a very thick quartz, iron stain quartz vein there. And there are a few different additives here. None of the additives are terribly long. It's kind of a room and pillar type operation. But I wanted to kind of follow the ore movement here, what happens in this mine. So it comes out of the room and pillar area there. The huge quartz vein. They're going to run it on ore cars along this track out to this ore bin right here. Then there's a tram that takes it across the wash here to that other ore bin. And then to the right of that is a ball mill. Then in the background, as you can see, there's a very steep road that goes up above the upper tank there. That was a cable road. And you can still see part of a cable there. But what happened is there's a Mack truck down there that you might have a hard time seeing. But that was winched up and down that hill to bring in supplies. And let's go enter the mine workings. Huge quartz vein here. A lot of bed springs in this mine. Look at that quartz. And here we go right up to that. There's a rock drill. How cool is that? Yeah, they're extremely heavy. This is so neat. Cool. And there's the crank with a feed on it. The drill steel would go right through that. So I'm guessing this was pneumatically operated. They're compressed here. Here are a couple shovels. Let's follow the tracks. It takes a left. More bed springs. So here's a look to the left. The vein is still here. Here's a look to the right. This is going to the left. There's a big boiler plate there. Muck sheet probably. The tracks are still going this way. Another big sheet there. And then the end of this drift. Here we're headed back out. I'm going to take a photo of this drill though, Julie. I don't see that every day, do I? I don't see any badging on it. So it says Holman. And something about a patent. Look at the old feed still works. And that's a tough day running the old Holman. Here's a pile of ore that never got shipped off to the bomb mill. Pretty nice rocks. I bet there's gold in there. There's some big areas they've blocked out of here. Here's a big pillar that's left. You can see how thick that vein was. And this just ends right here. There's a scaffold straight up. We're in another opening here. Some miscellaneous cables and stuff over that way. This way. Kind of a large area here that's been mined. Doesn't go real far though. That's the end. So one more thing while we're here. There's a big shaft here. It's a very square shaft. And there's some pretty heavy duty anchoring going into the wall here. So there's a ladder here. It's just a square shaft. And the ladder goes right down. So the ore would come out these tracks out of the mine into this ore bin. Which is also a tram terminal. Upper tram terminal. It has a grizzly on it that's made out of track, railroad track. There's also some coming in from this way. I'm not exactly sure. Well I guess they had another little spot up there that they mined. So here's the main pulley or the big bull wheel for the top of the tram. Looks like there's also a band break there. I don't see the lever for activating the break. Here is the gate. That would be open to fill up the tram cars when they were here. Let's see what happens really. Wow, out comes the ore. You're hired. Still works pretty well. So that piece up there is a cable guide. And then these pieces of steel would center the tram car when it came up in here. And we'll see some tram cars down there. There's a couple that are hanging over towards the no side of this. But these pieces of steel right here would guide the car up into this gate. Along with this little bumper type. Get it lined up with the gate for filling. So this is the other side of this tram filling station. Okay now let's go across the canyon here and see where the trams ended up with the load of ore. There's a heavy duty chain. And there's a big one in it. That's a lot bigger than the logging chain. Does it say anything on the... Here is a whole pile of parts. This looks like a band break. There's some odd shape spaces. Look at this huge knot. You got a socket for this one? No. That's a big one. I have an inch and a quarter wrench but that's not going to fit that. And there's a... I don't know if that's part of a mill of some sort. Is that a cone crusher? Might be... There's a ball from a ball mill down on the edge of it. Okay we are almost up to the area where the tram cars would have unloaded. This looks like it was a workbench and there's a store of pipe lengths and long bolts. Look at the long bolts. That's only about 18 inches. I'm guessing some of those are longer. Smaller pipe and fittings. Let's see if the old steps still work. Or stairs. Be careful they don't look like they're attached. I wouldn't fully trust them. I don't see me in it. I'm going to make it. So here are some parts of the various chain driven equipment and sprockets that they have. Kind of interesting. Links. Alright let's see if I can get up here. So here's the other end of the tram. This is where the buckets would have unloaded. But there is a big... I don't know if this is a steam engine or it's connected to this big tank but it looks like it has some possibilities of being a steam engine but I don't see a burner anywhere. Or maybe... that's this thing. I'm not a steam engine expert. It's not a hit in this engine. Let's go up on this platform. Let's go around and we'll go up on this platform. There's the other tram car. This tram car is just barely hanging on there by one pulley. It won't be up there forever. Here's the other backside of the tram on the lower terminal. That's pretty cool. So the ore would have come off the tram there and come into this jaw crusher. That's what this is. It would have come out of this jaw crusher and they would have brought it right over here to the ball mill. Here's the ball mill. There are still balls in there. There are a few there. There's one right here. You can see how thick this steel is. It's probably at least a half inch, maybe a little better. Here are the gears for the ball mill. There's a big cam lobe on this end of this ball mill for something. What does that do? I don't know what that does. Somebody will have to fill me in on that one. So this is looking up the cable road which was a road in here that's not meant for driving a normal vehicle on. They pulled this old Mack truck up and down with winches. There's the end of the cable that would have hooked up to the Mack truck right behind me and would have been winched up the cable road for hauling in supplies and equipment. All this stuff I had to get here somewhere. The Mack truck right now is loaded with a bunch of 8x8 or 10x10 or 12x12 is one or the other. And here it is the Mack truck that was hauled up and down the cable road. That is pretty neat. There's no engine in it. It's got solid rubber tires and steel spokes in the back and wood spokes in the front. And it's got a pretty good wheel drive in it. Here are the front wheels. It does have a steering mechanism but I don't think there's nothing. Is there anything left to steer? Oh yeah. The tie rod and everything. The pit bin arm and all that is still there. The wooden spokes. Yup, the wooden spokes. Like I say, it's probably still loaded with this last load of stuff. I don't know that they hauled ore with this I mean you'd think they would but since it was a leaching operation here why would they be hauling ore out? Okay, so once the ore was ground to a powder by the ball mill I believe they loaded another tram from there that went over to the leaching tanks over this way. Okay, this wagon holds a generator. It's got a six cylinder Wisconsin engine, right? What does this say over here? Wisconsin. All three say Wisconsin? Yup. They have the old distributor and the coil fuel pump. Wow, huh? Hand-built to dust. Here's your timing advance. And on this side is the actual generator. So, this would have been a battery to start at. There's a little generator over on the other side to charge this battery that would have been here. And then the big generator and in the back probably a 30 gallon drum for fuel and the fuel line is still here. Pretty neat. I really don't know what this thing is and it's on its side it looks like or maybe not. It has a ring gear and I don't know what it is. It doesn't have to help me out with that one. Here's a roller which is a wood drum on the end of it which is the turnaround point for a conveyor belt. I did see part of a conveyor down there by the ball mill. This is a forge to increase the temperature by blowing oxidative. It's kind of an interesting thing. I don't know what it is. It's got a pretty good pipe on it. It's a very heavy duty cast piece. So, this was a parts bin or parts bin bench or shelving unit. All the different parts they had U-bolts, regular bolts, plugs, fittings all made out of dynamite boxes. There are 20 dynamite boxes sitting here. Trojan, Atlas. Something pretty neat. It's a Fairbanks 500 pound capacity scale. It's just a flat scale. You would have put your item to be weighed on this and the funny thing is it's got a wooden beam and a wooden arm. So, you would hang your weights here your different weights until they're balanced and then that would tell you the weight of the item on the platform. Pretty neat. You don't see that very often. This was a shop of some sort here. Had a sink and a window and a corner shelf. So, this is some kind of a winch or a drive for maybe one of these belts. I'm not exactly sure. There's no cable on it. I like this how this clutching system works when you move this wedge shaped thing just pinches this shaft tight and then when you take it out it would just free spin. I'll figure out what they call that. It's got a name but... It still works. The band brake still works. Julie's pushing on the pedal and then turn it and push it over here. This is also a six cylinder engine and it looks like an old differential from a vehicle and a transmission here. So, they've adapted that onto this winch. It could have something to do. There's this bin here with the conveyor belt on it. Okay, so across the way are some of the bigger tanks Let's go look around there and see what kind of cool stuff we find. So, here's inside of this big steel tank. I see about a dozen or more mill balls. This might have been a water tank. I don't see any evidence of anything else going on. There's been a water outlet here. Yeah, that must have been a water tank. Okay, there are a series of two tanks here. They're plumbed together and this galvanized one also has some plumbing coming into it. And then there's this big funnel shaped one and there are some mill balls that somebody's put in there. I don't think they belong there but there are a lot of tailings right here. Quite a fair amount. So, I don't know exactly what was going on there. Leach tanks possibly. This device is a conveyor belt and a hopper. Yeah, I miss what I've had to have something driving it. There's a chain up there. This looks like it would have been a pump down here. This is below these tanks. There's a flat belt that would have run this. This is kind of an interesting deal here. This has a cable that goes way up on the side of the hill to the right and it goes way to the left on that hill. So that carriage could move up and down that cable and then this cable runs a tram bucket and I think what happens here is that this thing could be loaded probably from that conveyor right there and brought across the wash here to these across the wash here to these big tanks for leaching. That's my best guess anyway. Here's a big wash tub. All you need to do is bring your wash board. Wow, what is this thing? It says Mac on it and it's you bolted on to a huge piece of timber and I don't know what the rest of this thing is. Holy crap, this is huge. I guess that's separate from this thing. Here's another old part of a vehicle. There's another big water tank down there. Here's a vehicle with steel spokes. So I don't understand quite what this is doing down here. Look at the size of that solid tire. This is the size of the little tires that the Mack Truck Cup top had. Then look at this one. Wow. This must have been a heavy duty truck. This looks like the transmission or transfer case or something. It doesn't look like a rear end. And I don't have any idea what this big thing is. It's like a huge sled. It's possible this part of the stuff that was used on the cable road were quite a ways below the mine right now. Anyway, I'm glad we came down here because this is pretty neat, whatever it is. It's a couple different items, obviously. All kinds of fun stuff to play around with here. We haven't even seen some of the other cool stuff. So let's go back up and we got to see some more cars, some neat wheelbarrows and some other stuff. So you could see how this tram would work and be able to fill up those three different tanks with ore after it's been milled. This trolley here could move both on this cable one way and the other way too. And then on the cable that it's still hooked to it could move back and forth. That way it had two access moving. It could go any direction up there by those tanks and could fill up any three of the tanks. There's a little teeny water heater. That's about four feet tall. Look at that. What's that thing? An air tank? Too heavy? Not too heavy. That's weird. I've already been in the air tank. Our best guess at what this piece of equipment is is that it's a slusher. It looks like it operated in a similar fashion as a horse drawn plow. There would be some sort of power to pull this like a winch and a man would walk behind it controlling the angle of it with the two wooden handles similar to pushing a wheelbarrow. Now this is just a guess. Action! This one's my favorite. It's a wheelbarrow. Look at how cool it is. It's really heavy duty. It is heavy duty. Yeah. It's neat. I like it. It has forked wheels. Big pipe for a handle. Kind of narrow. I wonder if it's for working in a drift where you don't want a big wide wheelbarrow. Wow. Look at that big block. Holy. What a hook. Is it heavy? No. It's a big hook and pulley for a cable. It's hanging on some old track for some reason. Now ahead of Julie is an ore car. It's a big one. It's a rear dumper. The wheels are still there. I can see them under there. It's all buried in this pipe and track. This track came out from underneath that tank. Here's another wheelbarrow. This stuff all got involved in the wash and it's all jumbled up. The ore car is still in pretty good shape it looks like. Too bad it's all mashed in there. Ask them to come back at the other stuff. Julie's got a homemade tool. Looks like a scraper of some sort. It's on a 10 foot pole. It's been used to pull something like if you're scraping ore down a chute or if you're clearing a conveyor slot or something for the milled material. Who knows? Let's put it back up where it was. That's where we found it. Let's continue up this tight wash and see what happens. We're going through the mill tillings right full of cyanide. Good thing cyanide breaks down when it's sunlight hits it. Another big hook and pulley here. Man is that heavy duty. Here's my foot. Wow. Unbelievable. Here's another ore car. Looks like one of the wheels came off. That's got a pedal on it. Here are a couple more balls from the ball mill. A couple different sizes. Yeah. We must have used different sizes. Here are these tanks. They're pretty tall. They're about 8 feet tall. Yep. So this is below these big tanks. There were tracks coming out of them. We're standing on all tillings about 12 feet thick. Here's the next one. These tanks are huge. There are several boxes around here. There are a lot of them. There's about 6 or 8 things right here. There were a couple down the wash. Some of you will know what those are for. Looks like a lot of refined sand. And this one is all rusted out. Well that's going to conclude our exploration of this magnificent site. One reminder, I believe it is private property although it's not posted and it doesn't appear that the owners are trying to keep anybody away. But if you do come out, respect that it's private and that the owner is letting us come out and visit this still. So we hope you enjoyed the video. We thank you for watching and we'll see you next time. See you next time. Thanks for watching. Hope you guys enjoyed it.