Abandoned 1880s Mining Camp

there's one small building here the first one we're going to take a look at today and hi so what are we uh doing here i don't know if you've heard that jen's saying she's in the loo well we're again exploring with jenny gibbs whoa and we are going to explore everything that's around this area let's take a look so you see the cement foundations and just a quick look inside the privy as you can see the actual toilet's been shattered it's just a simple wooden shack and same on the other side servo was the manufacturer of choice we've noticed at a lot of these mining camps for refrigeration this one's got some bullet holes rust bottom of a beer bottle in there and the temperature control and there's just uh several of these buildings in disarray all over so this could have been another bunk house probably there's several more up that area but we'll tackle this one first so can you guess what this is okay it's got a solid floor huh [Music] two pipes here hole in the ground there and bathroom yep so this is the shower house where they used to hang their scrubbies have a shower do their business i would imagine those two were basins and there'd be a shower stool there and a shower stall here and would that have been the loo it looks like that could have been a lou and i guess maybe two for one they brought a colander in here so they could do some washing of their vegetables at the same time strain their veggies that's pretty cool find that is a super neat find isn't that cool so it wouldn't be a kitchen though like it wouldn't be a cook house no it's a toilet shower because also another giveaway for the shower houses the windows are very high for the steam and that kind of stuff and also stop peeping toms except for the fact that this one has got four small windows little windows here so naughty naughty then you've got this funky structure here at first glance i was like oh there's an old school dunny but since this whole place did have plumbing i'm wondering if it was for the water heater so this is another shower house you can actually see it better they had a lot of showers up here so very clean she got two definite showers over the shower pan i wouldn't have thought this was a shower because of the window but i can't see a hole for a loo so not entirely sure ah cubby space maybe another shower house here oh yeah okay i can see this one very clearly that it looks like a shower house and yes the shower pans here are still in really good shape and then lined with the sheet metal all the piping's missing out of here though so we found the register yep what are you gonna say in there uh pin in the i don't atlas what you told me pin in the atlas explores take a look let's take a look jenny what are you writing in the book be grateful make good choices in your own adventures and i'll catch you on the flip side nice [Music] [Applause] [Music] now while the ladies are signing the register i'm gonna take a look at this place that's leaning pretty badly see the remains of some electrics and appearing inside it's just completely flatten the back side there looks like you can see the floor so this must have been a little covered porch area a little mud room possibly let's see if we can go around the other side and get a better look in absolutely wide open and see the roof of the structure next to it as well so again i'm just imagining that this would have been another bunk house there's quite a few shower houses so as we said earlier they definitely wanted the miners to stay clean give them a nice place to stay really think about it these um buildings housed the miners between the 1930s and the 1960s and the miners that were here used to mine the talc from the talc mines so what do you think i think this used to be my house this is where i would have lived i i hope you're insured no i agree i think again long looks like another bunk house area oh mess hole mess hall yeah because we've got pipes we've got a lot of pipes and refrigerators could be a metal yep so copper and silver was discovered in the area in the 1880s right but due to the heat and the amount of water needed didn't last very long it it wasn't worth continuing to mine and then in the early 1900s talc was the main commodity so it was talc that was mined here you did a white shade it is a function that's a lampshade and is that a water heater we just walked past that looks like a small water heater than fridge i guess yeah for the mess hall they would need water here for hot water for cooking and washing up a hot water heater hot water heater and small one-man cabin complete with shower and maybe the superintendent got to be in something like this right or maybe it may be the chef the cook right next door to this yeah so what would that be oh so he's got a shower there's a shower and uh the toilet and then a small small stove okay so this stove is obviously older than all the others do all right we've got two more buildings in this section this one looks in really good shape corrugated metal all along the outside and i guess electrical would have been up there that's what i'm thinking yeah so yeah i don't know how many miners lived here well it seems like there's quite a bit there's a lot of shower houses and mess hall bunk houses so this also appears to be be careful on the floor here this looks like a bunk house it does this one looks like a more separate rooms yeah four rooms and then this would be maybe where they come in and oh this is where where the stove would be if you've got the stove pipe nice and they had separate rooms right where we went last time it was just a big room and probably maybe two in a room maybe i would say sidewise maybe more see that they did have drywall in here so this is a newer addition a little bit newer look at that window i think they've got a uh a cold storage or is that access to using the spring maybe mystery that needs to be solved jenny's got the hat she's going first i got three cameras on right now this is a cold storage and it's not very deep it does not go to the secret spring uh about 12 feet back all wood and yeah no shelves no nothing no animals in there either thank goodness andrea's also got a hat on so she's going next i'm gonna follow not that we don't believe jenny we just need to get this on footage as well definitely cold storage a larder a root cellar [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this is definitely a very posh bunk house because this is a kitchen oh wow okay so maybe this is where the superintendent's got to be for some reason i feel like they're things would be split between the regular workers and people in charge so maybe this i don't know maybe you're right maybe it is a superintendent's place so this would be like a kitchen diner maybe there's a door there's another door so so i would say if they could close no there was no door here this was just wide open i would say no then i would say no to superintendents i would because you've got a door here with steps coming into kitchen maybe diner and then that in there you've got the rooms either side yeah so you've got four rooms there and then uh like a corridor coming in so i would say it's kind of like a posh bunk house that's my theory anyway and i'm sticking with it and maybe like yeah like it's more like a break room whereas if that was the mess hall potentially down there where they did all the big meals this is more like come wash your hands take a break yeah you can have tables that you could sit and do stuff but then that would be a bedroom though well yeah but but this is closer to all the mines yeah possibly not sure it looks like fire what's your thought comment down below [Music] so i'm guesstimating that this stone or remains of stone cabin dates back to the original mining camp here in the 1880s what do you think i'm thinking the same thing because there are a few more of these scattered around and look at the side that doorway hang on let's get this real quick look at how slim that doorway is and you've got to remember i'm only five foot three and a half and that half an inch is really important as you know well then that means that the miners were very short because this isn't very tall very short and very slim but this is i mean there's an old fire place back here so a lot of sediment in the ground yes that's washed in from this left side here now i'm going to say that this is the first stone cabin like this that i've seen a fireplace in it yeah and i've seen a lot of the chinese camp so i would say this goes up this would have been maybe a complete cabin yeah maybe they put tents over the top of it maybe it did have a roof yeah canvas because i don't see really remains of wood unless you know they later on stripped it to use elsewhere you know maybe and there's another little cabin over there and it does look like there's remains of possibly a third that has been completely washed over with these rocks but absolutely can make out the frame and the old fireplace would have been back here this i presume is the spring we've got a water water tank here as well right so there's the back side of the water turtle we could see earlier and this is the the big group of palm trees i can as you can see it's just super thick down there it's just choked with all the tamarisk as well isn't it right and there's spring would have run down here but as you can see now it's it is dry so people have kind of come up to check this out but it just it's really overgrown now and like i said i don't hear the sound of trickling water anymore okay deep within the undergrowth okay i'm not gonna you can make out maybe back in there remnants of a pipe so the spring would have been right in an area that does not look uh safe to venture any further with because you just you don't know what's i mean we've had we have tested thrown rocks and stuff down in here but you just you still never know so time to retreat oh and i'm getting eaten alive by the palm trees [Music] might just be able to make out andrea and jenny continuing up the old mining road i stopped climb up here to check out the top of this ore pass so i got the view from below and here's the view from the top which goes all the way down there and then all the else that is up here looks like just at the base of that little ravine the remains of possibly the outhouse you got a little bit of structure over here and probably powder room let's go get a closer look at those oh and before some rail still here pretty good size little closer look at what remains of this building here really not much at all a few more fragments that way and that's i think the remains of the outhouse it's just the bottom left take a look at that at a moment and you can see on the rock face here all the drill holes and i can see the back of this already so it is just like a powder room powder storage there we go a little more light instructions all right somebody's left some instructions for their cot and then all that remains in here now is the shelving you see some more drill holes here in the face and that's it just goes to this pocket here and as promised here we are that's what i believe might be the remains of the dunny only the floor left okay let's go out and catch up to andrea and jenny all right walk ahead this is kind of a low entrance so this doesn't look like it is a mine here because they've done a lot of timbering oh there's another oh that looks like that game remember that game that the pigs what's that called cribbage an old crippage board on in here counting the loads that's nice so it does look like the this ad it does flood in the entrance here nice solid door that's what made me think it was a um powder house right what does oh this is a mine it's nice and cool in here and that definitely and you've got rails right the way along yeah so it's still got um rails yeah underneath the board so they did seal this off at some point i can smell very dusty that did squat okay shall we venture just down a little way maybe a couple hundred feet and that's it yep who wants to go first that will be me piles of falling rock yep or very obvious holes and false floors oh yeah false like whether like we can tell this is this is this is solid because you can see all the mud but yeah but when we get closer to the end it might turn into something else and also um an airflow airflow although it doesn't really seem like there's airflow but then kind of it does it's very cold yeah that's what making me think that this will flow i'm gonna let stevo go first because of the the light he's got better lights on the camera oh now we can see where we're heading yeah and as you can see there's a natural fault in the rock there and see how it's all smoothed out and then also up above us they would have had either hanging lights or uh air line off of those every so often and there's a drill hole off to the right it's kind of neat to see we've got a is this a drift to our right nope just a uh a pocket now sometimes now this mine is fairly wide you can see the ore car tracks so normally in nines if they're more narrow they would do a pocket if the ore cars are coming past they have a way to get out of the way but this one's wide enough they may be able to just let the cars pass depending on how big those are there's a lot of footprints on the floor as well on the ground right so quite a few people seem to oh we got some uh he's getting he's he's getting all excited here's some tubing so it's like they could have been using this for vent tubing we've got a box here is there any dates on it let's see here sears and roebuck company store number is off asheville north carolina look at the sticker there that's really cool and obviously nothing's going to be in there oh there's a carnation evaporated milk the talc is actually flaking away these boards are holding it up but that could potentially be oh yeah so there's like a chunk here yeah this huge piece is left off the back and uh yeah that's nasty you can see all the the crack marks there so where they've kept all this vent tubing it's kind of uh helped block that doesn't appear well there is track back there but and it does actually go around the corner yeah they kind of looks like they tried to seal that area off with uh making a work area out of it possibly so you don't want to touch any of these beams or anything and here you can also see all the loads that they've taken out of this mine on this timber here that timber there oh this is oh my gosh wow that's a whole bunch of math okay so this is so difficult okay those are all loads right and you can see oh my gosh there's more here this bin is full so we'll be very careful here on the ribs look at all the loads that they've taken over here and then here okay you can see that board there how much weight is on that that is could just completely so 231 would that be 231 foot in and i think yeah we're probably about that more math and then uh that just drops off it looks like it stops it does say it goes down uh not going anywhere near there you can see how the timbers have just completely splintered like a toothpick and then turning back we've got a ladder here which tape measure looks like there's another drift level cross cut up there to the right and to the left you can see this is a there's the top of the ore shoot so they stopped it out up top there but i think this is as far as we're going to go in this one all right everyone thank you again so much for watching and we are here with our new favorite explorer like you're just the greatest person to explore with you're amazing so we would just like to know what was it like to venture into your first mine okay it was really really neat and i thought i was really happy that you guys were with me because i wouldn't have even remotely gone in because i didn't know those different things that you taught me about looking for i knew it for animals but about you know what it looks like up top what the rocks are down below and i just i love that i found math in the mind to be honest with you yeah because i missed you talking about some different things just i'm reading like somebody's mathematical equations on the thing right uh but super neat yeah that it's always cool to find stuff like that i mean the old tape measure because it's like that was somebody's work you know they were there they did that and that's what they've left behind so it's always neat to find oh and then all the thumb prints oh or the or the dots of how many cars how many yeah the load counts yeah because there was a few on the outside that i was like oh you didn't 12 but then you got inside and there was just everywhere everywhere hundreds of them in fact that's the most we've ever seen in a mine oh yeah that was insane the amount so better but we must say that entering minds is dangerous so please just don't go in on your own always let somebody know where you are don't go in unless you know what you're doing we're not professional miners but we have learnt a lot from our mining friends so [Music] we're still very very sensible in what we do we'll never go in too far we always check everything before the safety aspects before we enter so yeah and on that note get out there go and explore put another pin in the atlas and we will see you on our next adventure bye [Music] [Music] you