Part of successful mine exploring – and, really, life in general – is knowing when to cut your losses… That first site we visited looked great from a distance and, undoubtedly, at one time it was an amazing abandoned mine. However, time, water and apparent reclamation efforts made that one a zero. The nauseating stench of the fermenting Mormon crickets is something that you really should have experienced, dear viewers. Oh, and the fun fact of the day is that Mormon crickets are not actually crickets.

Fortunately, striking out at the first site led to success at the next site… That was an interesting mining camp that had obviously been in existence for more than one generation of miners. We were initially discouraged because it seemed that the portals of the adits at this abandoned mine were caved as well. However, that proved not to be the case. The larger adit that we made our way into certainly made us wish that all of the others had been accessible as well because those workings were significant. There was an odd mix of industrial and precious metals mined at that second location ranging from cinnabar (mercury) and scheelite (tungsten) to gold and silver.

According to the records we located, most development work at the second location took place in the 1940s.

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

You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: https://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, we set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, we're 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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