Before declaring this the biggest abandoned mine in Nevada, which is quite a claim considering the number of abandoned mines in Nevada, I sat on this video for a while after exploring it… I did not wish to make an unsubstantiated claim about the “biggest abandoned mine” without a lot of research and a lot of talking to others in the field first. Well, having done so, I am confident in my declaration about this, indeed, being the biggest abandoned mine.
I will not be showing off the entire mine in this series. Instead, I will be showing just one level of the mine. Just one level? Yes, one level of this mine alone will take several videos… Now, consider the fact that there are many, many levels of this mine! I believe it would be tedious for viewers to see this entire abandoned mine showcased over a mega-series of something like 100+ videos. So, it is my intention to show this level now and then show other mines after the series on this level is complete. If the interest is there, I can show other levels of this mine in the future under the “Biggest Abandoned Mine In Nevada” heading so that viewers will know that it is the same mine.
Sure, there are bigger abandoned mines in existence around the world... Underneath Butte, Montana there are a series of interconnected mines that have a staggering number of miles of workings (It is my understanding that few, if any, of these are accessible though). I know that the Empire Mine in Grass Valley, California has 367 miles of underground workings. The miners took 5,800,000 ounces of gold out of the Empire Mine and so the effort was worth it, but that is still a staggering number... Alas, almost all of those workings are now underwater (The Empire Mine was turned into a State Park and is worth a visit for anyone interested).
The abandoned mine being showcased in this video also has flooded sections that are inaccessible. However, fortunately, large parts of the mine are still accessible. The accessible sections provide plenty to keep even a dedicated and large team of mine explorers busy for quite a long time!
This was a tungsten (wolfram) mine, although plenty of secondary minerals, such as silver and zinc were also extracted. As with countless other abandoned mines, this mine has been worked, abandoned and then worked again several times as the price of tungsten has fluctuated. Active mining may resume in the future if tungsten prices move up sufficiently.
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so I’d encourage you to adjust your settings to the highest quality if it is not done automatically.
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD
As well as a small gear update here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: 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 colorful niche of our history is gone forever. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.
So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
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