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Deep Blue Mystery Mineral Inside An Abandoned Mine In Nevada

Published on Wed, Feb 7th 2018 Travel & Events Rectangular HD

Well, getting to this abandoned mine proved the old adage about how you’ve got to want it… We drove as far as we could down rough dirt roads in a remote part of Nevada until even the 4WD with high clearance couldn’t go any farther. Then, we switched over to dirt bikes and rode those for many miles through the mountains until it was impossible to proceed even on the bikes. At that point, I descended the steep canyon on foot to finally reach this mine. There was certainly no road leading all of the way to the mine and there wasn’t even a trail that I saw after the road stopped. It was pure bushwhacking getting down to explore this one.

Given how hard it was to get to this mine and given the fact that I lugged the drone all of the way down to the bottom of the canyon meant that you were getting drone footage in this video even if the drone had never left the ground!

I didn’t see any signs of heavy equipment having been at this site (which is not surprising considering the location), but it still would have been quite a feat just bringing in the rail for the ore carts as well as the tools the miners would have needed. And if they used metal ore carts, these would HAVE to have been brought to the mine in pieces and reassembled on site.

The cabin/workshop was somewhat interesting to me. I didn’t see any signs of a bed or really any signs that the miners had lived there aside from those couple of rusty cans that we saw inside. Also, that structure would not have been a pleasant place to stay in the winter! However, it would have been impossible for someone to commute in to this mine given the distances involved. So, someone must have stayed here. Given how this seemed like something of a shoestring mining operation, it makes me wonder if a couple of miners didn’t just sleep rough inside of that structure of corrugated metal during the warmer months along with their tools and that primitive fireplace to keep away the cold at night. The miners might have just worked here for a couple of seasons.

While exploring this abandoned mine and its surroundings, I saw no evidence at all that anyone has visited this site in decades. The “road” – if you can even call it that – which runs closest to the site was completely overgrown and sections of it were blocked by small rockslides. All traces of whatever trail that might have once existed and descended to the mine have vanished. And, of course, there were no footprints or signs of modern human activity such as trash or tire marks within many miles of this abandoned mine. It isn’t often that one is able to visit a historical site like that in our modern era.

I was quite taken with that brilliant, deep blue mystery mineral inside of the mine... I have never seen anything like it outside of the fine lapis lazuli that is mined in Afghanistan. However, I don’t believe that what we saw inside of the mine was lapis lazuli… Was it? I sincerely hope that someone in the audience can definitively identify it.

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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really does make a difference…

You can click here for the full playlist of abandoned mines: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

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 niche of our history is gone forever.

So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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