I Found an Ore Cart! | Sierra-Nevada #3

I figured that the next leg of my adventure would be a rather predictable one. In fact, as light faded from the sky as I drove toward through the Marietta Wild Burro Reserve, I sort of wondered what I was going to do for most of the following day.

A slight rearrangement of my schedule.

My destination - deep in the Excelsior Mountains - was one where I would have told you that, with near 100% certainty, I was going to find my first fully-functional, rolling ore cart. I say would have, because I'm getting about an hour ahead of myself. And I can smell the over-confidence.

I was here - instead of winding my way up Queen Canyon to the Boundary Peak trailhead - because it was snowing up at Boundary Peak. I figured that delaying my trek to Nevada's highest point - until the sun was shining, and I could actually see the surrounding landscape - would make for a more pleasant hike.

Then, just as I began my ascent, I was stopped in my tracks. By the largest tracked tractor I've ever seen.

Look at the size of that bucket. I could park the Tacoma in there!

After climbing around on this man-child play structure - and making digger noises as I pushed the various controls this way and that - I hopped back in my mini-truck, headed into the mountains. I'd lost even more daylight, but given that I planned to camp less than half a mile from the ore cart, I wasn't worried.

There's a maze of roads, all created a century ago by miners in search of shiny metals.

I'd been to this area a couple years earlier - when @mrs.turbodb and I had explored our way up to the Endowment Mine - but I'd decided to take a new route this time, up through a wash rather than along a ridgeline road, and as I approached the old mine camp, I was greeted by a sea of white bags.

"I'm rich!"

I pretty quickly realized there were a bunch of problems with my "instantly rich" plan, but it was still very interesting to see all the prospecting that'd been done since I was last here in 2023. Everything was carefully organized, with each large plastic bag topped with a smaller cotton bag containing "the most promising ore." And, everything was labeled with exactly where it'd come from.

This tells you where to look for more, I guess.

After confirming that there were no baseball-sized chunks of gold with my name on them - at least in the few bags I checked - I continued on to camp, the sun sinking below the horizon - not that I could see it with all the clouds - a few minutes before I arrived.

Not hungry for dinner - I'd been snacking all afternoon - I decided to make a quick jaunt over to the adit where I expected to find the ore cart. I knew it'd be too dark for photos, but I figured it'd be a fun way to end the day, and then I'd come back in the morning to dote around the site for a couple of hours. And so, I set off on the old miner's trail toward the workings.

Half a mile away, it was dark by the time I arrived, but there was no question that I'd made a big mistake. The workings I'd been so sure were those where an ore cart could be found were anything but. In fact, it was a vertical shaft, with no rail in sight.

Well, damn.

I headed back to camp, pondering my next move as rain drops began falling. That meant quick deployment of the tent, before I climbed up into my roost for the night. A few minutes with my Kindle - I'd recently gotten a new Paperwhite after leaving my last one on a plane - that has a warmer backlight which I really enjoy, and I fell asleep to the pleasant pitter-patter of rain on the tent.

The following morning...

Cabin camp.

The rain came down pretty good until about 2:00am, at which point the storm system moved on and everything had plenty of time to dry out before morning. Unlike most mornings, I was in no rush to climb out of the tent and face the day, my spirits having taken a bit of a hit on discovering that the ore cart was not where I expected it to be. Eventually though, I ate a quick breakfast before wandering back to the workings to check them out in the daylight.

The little old cabin I'd camped next to was still in reasonably good shape. On the outside.

The workings that I'd been 95% sure were ore cart territory. Turns out that what I thought was rail line in satellite imagery was a collapsing headframe of the vertical shaft.

Making my way back to camp, I sent my little buddy up into the air in search of nearby workings that I might have overlooked. When nothing promising popped a full battery pack later, I figured my best bet was to wander around the area for the remainder of the day, hoping that something I'd dismissed in my research would lead to redemption.

Even though I didn't find anything, the flying camera did provide some spectacular views as the sun streamed in from the horizon.

I began by revisiting the Endowment Mine, and poking around a bit at all the new activity that'd gone on since my last visit. The white bags I'd discovered the previous evening were everywhere, and a cursory inspection suggested that they too had been abandoned*. Such is the way in these remote mines, where only a handful ever even broke even.

Endowment Mine camp.

Headframe at the Endowment Mine.

After flying the drone - an activity that I'd engage in quite a bit throughout the day - through the surrounding hills in search of rail-tracked workings, it was back into the Tacoma to explore the maze of roads that wind through the Excelsior Mountains, many of which we'd bypassed on our previous visit. Luckily, I still had a lot of the mines - that I could see via satellite - marked on my map, and I figured that they'd be fun to explore no matter what!

My first stop was at the assay office of the old Blackhawk Mine.

A large open stope of the Blackhawk, which was primarily a Galena (lead) mine.

From there, I spent a few hours winding my way to the terminus of rocky roads that were once an indication of the hope held by those who built them. Today, falling into disrepair, I found myself hoping I'd always find a safe place to turn around, and that I might find something of interest at the inevitable hole in the mountain I was sure to find at the end.

This old rail line - leading to an ore bin - was a fun find at the end of one of the roads.

A little before 1:00pm, I'd exhausted the maze of roads I'd mapped to various mines. Parked at the end of the final road - now blocked by a fallen pinyon pine - the road seemed like it must have been questionably passable - due to the steep grade and erosion - even when it was in its prime. Figuring that I'd be gone for only an hour or so, I grabbed my camera gear and tripod and headed up the hillside.

Parking for one.

Almost immediately, I came upon the lower end of a rail-based tram that had been used to haul supplies - and likely lower ore - from the mine another quarter mile up the road. This seemed to be reasonably good confirmation that the road itself was lightly used.

The track wasn't in great shape, but I bet this made a hard life just a little less difficult back in the day.

I considered following the rail line - after all, I was looking for ore carts, and those need rails(!) - but the road was nearly as steep and I figured I'd have access to whatever working those rails originated at, once I got a little higher up. Sure enough, after a quarter mile - and several hundred feet of vertical gain - I found myself at an impressive little cabin!

A hub of activity in the early 1900s.

There were lots of artifacts around; this place seems rarely visited. An old boot (left), gallon-sized glass jug (top right), and Wearwell Motor Oil can (bottom right) were just a few of the cool finds.

From the cabin, a track traversed the hillside. Following it for a few hundred feet, I was a bit disappointed to discover that it ended at an old truck-powered winch, but no adit filled with ore carts.

This old winch - set into the hillside - was used to raise and lower material from the lower tram station I'd passed earlier.

From there, I continued my wandering. I'd later discover that I was at Roy ▮▮▮▮ 's ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮  Mine.

▮▮▮  was a quiet, hardworking man, with exceptional mechanical skills, who mined this area extensively on numerous mining claims, never selling any of his high grade silver ore. He was a bit of a hermit and until he got to know you was somewhat reserved.

He stayed in many different locations throughout these mountains, but his main mine was the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮  Mine, and the nearby extension.

He served in the military in WW2 as a tail gunner on a B-17 bomber. His entire crew was killed on a mission, but, luckily for him, he was on a different plane at that time.

Roy is second from the left.

He drove a Chevy roadster through the mountains to some of the claims he worked. Supposedly, he had two transmissions in the Chevy, one reversed to achieve suitable gearing for crawling up the steep hills.

He took work as a mechanic during the winter months when it was too cold to be high in the mountains working his claims.

Ron and Beth, by way of Tom and Julie

Over the next several hours, I'd follow old trails and waste rock piles I could see on the hillsides from one working to the next. Up and down, what I thought would be a quick jaunt out of the truck turned into a several mile, 1,500-vertical-foot affair. It was far from the predictable day that I'd envisioned. At the very least, I should have brought along some water.

A hundred feet above the cabin, one of the main workings was still littered with machinery and washing machine tubs full of high-grade ore.

An inclined shaft, collared by the pinyon pine that were so prolific on the hillside.

There wasn't much inside any of the workings, or at least, not as far as I wandered into them.

After a lot of up and a lot of down - which meant there was even more up and down in store as I returned to the Tacoma - I came to the final working I planned to visit in the area. Now far from any and all roads, and with the last several workings being rather small and uninteresting, I was mostly just checking this final one off the list since I was in the area.

Even as I gained the top of the waste rock pile and noticed some old track, I didn't think much of it. After all, I'd seen plenty of track throughout the day, only to find the rails unburdened by ore carts. Sure that the adit would end a few dozen feet into the mountain, I peered inside.

A cooking pan, old boots, and the legs from a stove were nestled along the wall.

Oh. My. Goodness!

I'd found it! Not by any intelligent reasoning or well-planned research - in fact, those things led me to the entirely wrong place - but rather by a combination of hardheadedness, endurance, and pure luck in my endless searching of these remote mountains. #nevergiveup

I wasn't even really sure what to do at this point, so I headed back to the mouth of the adit to regroup. There, I shucked the gear I was carrying and grabbed the tripod and a few LEDs so I could take plenty of photos to document my find. And then, I set about clearing the rail of several years of debris - both rock fall from the adit as well as packrat detritus - so I could roll the cart into the daylight.

Just like the old days.

Inside the old wooden cart, this blasting cord had seen better days.

Ready to dump.

What's this - a second ore cart?!

The wheels rolled smoothly, as if they'd been recently greased.

End of the line.

Even the tilting mechanisms still worked!

Understandably, I spent a long time with the ore carts and exploring this extension of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮  Mine. The adit itself punched its way perhaps 400 feet into the mountain, ending at an inclined shaft, also lined with rail. There, an old wooden skip car - the wheels no longer in place - sat perched on the precipice, waiting for the next load of ore to be pulled from the depths. It was fantasic!

Re-energized, I put everything back just the way I'd found it and followed an old trail up and over the ridge into which the adit was carved. Down the other side, I found one of ▮▮▮ 's old cabins, mostly collapsed but still full of the possesions that once occupied his time.

An old home.

The only artwork decorating any wall.

The brilliance of this 1939 Saturday Evening Post Cheverolet advertisement was stunning!

More boots, and a well-used hatchet.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I discovered was a packrat-soiled copy of an old Information Circular published by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Mines. Consisting of two papers - Prospecting for Lode Gold, and Locating Claims on Public Domain, it was "prepared for use in reply to ... inquiries concerning favorable areas in which to prospect for gold, procedure to be followed, equipment required, and allied subjects ... and is a preprint of part of a bulletin to be issued later on "Equipping, Developing, and Operating Small Gold Mines."

Wait, the government used to tell you how and where to find gold?

It seemed like such an interesting, historically significant find, that I took the time to photograph each of the pee-stained pages, which I then transcribed and published with the photos as a Prospecting for Lode Gold & Locating Claims on the Public Domain - Department of the Interior - Bureau of Mines archive. It is a fascinating read.

By now it was getting later in the afternoon, and having neglected to eat lunch before I left, I was both hungry and thirsty. Taking a last look at the cabin, I began my upward trek - this time following an old trail I'd not seen on my way down - back to the Tacoma.

Found this worthless green rock on the way back.

Also found some nice views.

An hour later, just before 4:00pm, I jubilantly arrived at the Tacoma. While my joy might have been attributed to the fact that I'd finally - after eight years of looking - found not one, but two working ore carts, but it was in fact due to the food and water that I knew would soon be in my body.

A simple hot dog - or three - never tasted so good.

My stomach satisfied and spirits now higher than ever, I climbed back into my mechanical beast and retraced my path out of the mountains and back toward the California and Nevada border along US-6.

The weather wasn't looking promising for an early-morning summit of Boundary Peak, but I'm certainly no weather-guesser.

I'd once again arrive in camp just as the sun was setting, but this time I wouldn't be alone.

 

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