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Showing posts with label colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colorado. Show all posts

Friday, August 4, 2023

Colorado Trip Report

I have once again travelled to the wild and distant lands of Colorado Territory to bring back tales of adventure and photographs of the same.

Click here for the video.

In 2017 I made my first trip to Colorado to explore The Ghost Town of Gillman Colorado along with the mine structures below. Underestimating the terrain, I legitimately risked our lives (a few different times) by not being prepared from the outset. This led to a series of unforunate events. I learned a valuable lesson that day, which I promptly forgot and then re-learned again when I was nearly search-and-rescued on our trip to The Skaguay Hydroelectric Power Plant. Woops. The lesson is simple: Nothing is easy in Colorado. About a year had passed since I explored around Leadville, so naturally I forgot all about those prior lessons despite the added difficulty doing it alone, fresh out of surgery with a broken collarbone... I'm very stupid and I can't resist a good adventure. Okay? I have Adventuritis. It's a thing.

I had actually made a decent legitimate discovery of an accessible mine entrance deep underground (on the aforementioned broken collarbone trip) and I was planning to follow up on, and explore it, this time around. It was actually the main objective for this year's trip. Here's the tantalizing reconnaissance photo I took while not yet healed, wearing a sling, and unable to really do anything about it:

Colorado Mine Tunnel copyright 2024 sublunar
Colorado Mine Tunnel by sublunar

DISCLAIMER: Abandoned mines actively want to kill you. Bad air will kill you before you get very far inside them. Random unarked thousand foot shafts hidden in the woods and any other number of things at these sites can also kill you if you get too close. Risking your life often means risking your rescuer's life and that makes you an asshole. Don't be an asshole and don't try this at home!

I promise I'll wrap this up soon. So I found this awesome death trap, right? I'm super excited because I frickin love awesome death traps but my dominant arm was in a sling and I may be an idiot but I'm not an asshole. I wasn't prepared regardless of the injury. But if I wasn't crippled... I might have gone further inside. Which might have killed me. Which would make me an asshole. It's a finer line than you'd think.

As luck would have it, the mine was sealed not long before I returned. I heard the news in advance and verified myself in person. It had a shiny new metal gate/lock/etc. A significant new development for me this time around was that I had finally met some like-minded Coloradoans. Until now, I have been doing Colorado alone or with only people I brought with me (research/scouting/etc was also a solo activity). So I was fortunate to learn about it being freshly sealed while I still had a little time to find a plan B. Note that I will refrain from publicly identifying the aforementioned main objective.

With the Colorado underground once again eluding me, I did some digging and picked out what was among the most complete set of ruins I could find in satellite imagery, while also not being a well-known high traffic location. As it turns out, this place was a semi-popular 4x4 offroading trail. But aside from some shaky off-roading footage and not much in the way of articles/photos/information of the mines in the area, it seemed otherwise nowehere near as well documented as a lot of others. I visited the first of the structures, which was larger than, but separate from, the main bulk of the other stuff out here. Explored it without issue, though the road was already surprisingly rough at this point. Unfortunately, we didn't rent a Jeep* this time to save money.. and that cost me considerably. To get to the main concentration of structures, I drove the Santa Fe further up some genuinely dangerous trails that were barely over one lane in width and which featured guaranteed death, or a close approximation thereof, if you slipped over the edge. It got worse from there and by the time I decided to bail, I had to reverse a considerable distance to get to the nearest switchback where I could park the car safely and hike the rest of the 2 miles up to the site. *Note that this isn't a Jeep commercial, but on the last trip I was fortunate enough to have one. I had ended up driving through creek beds through the mountains to reach a few spots and the Jeep couldn't have done a better job getting over and through it all.

Once again, I had failed to appreciate the Colorado terrain. But this was my one day to really go for it on this trip and so I went for it on foot after nervously reversing the definitely-not-a-jeep into a suitable spot. I brilliantly also decided to leave my water because I didn't have room in my camera bag. I was expecting the structures to be at the base of the valley and all at similar elevation. And I was wrong. The hike in was entirely uphill and felt longer than 2 miles. By the time I got to the valley, I realized, that after first driving, then ditching the vehicle and hiking the rest of the way, how high up I was already when I could see what looked like an entire mountain range beyond the valley at roughly the same height as I was. And then I looked up and saw the next locations I had pinned were considerably higher up. I was doing ok but definitely feeling the altitude and the lack of oxygen. I explored everything on this level and made the steep climb up to the next. And then I climbed up to and explored the next one but by that point I was definitely questioning how much more I could do. There had been no cell service and I had seen no other humans for hours already and I was finding it increasingly difficult to catch my breath. I took frequent breaks and pushed onward and upward.

I hadn't even gotten to "the good stuff" yet, or what I envisioned to be the good stuff based on satellite views, and I began to feel a little off. I argued with myself and attributed it to psyching myself out and climbed further. I could barely take a couple steps without needing to stop so I could breathe and calm my heart back down. The most complete mining structure I had seen yet on this hike stood above me with a group of other buildings close by. I got almost close enough to throw a rock up to it, but in the end it eluded me. I already felt light-headed and knew that I had pushed my luck. I later realized I was at around 11,000 feet in elevation and I don't know if I just wasn't acclimated or what but it was affecting my ability to physically overcome the terrain and breathe at the same time. I had no water and I had been hiking for hours and it was a much more strenuous hike than I had expected. So I decided to turn back, be grateful, and just get back alive. I strongly preferred to do this without first losing consciousness.

This place wasn't exactly like finding a lost pirate ship in the mountains that nobody knew about but it was still a fun and adventurous trip. And while I didn't get to see what I felt would be the minimum acceptable number of structures I had planned to visit out here, I still got to put a check mark next to this one and return home safely.

The last two photos are: looking up at "the good stuff" (maybe?) and: the view of my elevation in the mountains around me at the point in which I turned back, respectively. I would like to add that they are both much higher in elevation (relatively as well as geographically) than they appear in photos. I was really high, I swear!

Bonanza Mine and Mill

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Bonanza Mine and Mill copyright 2024 sublunar
Bonanza Mine and Mill Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mines

Rawley Mine was in the business of extracting Copper and Lead, among other minerals, at this location from 1882 until 1969.

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Probably where the "good stuff" was located. I'm confident there was a long lost pirate ship just out of reach..

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

From the same position as above photo (at roughly 11,000 feet in elevation) facing the opposite direction back down at the valley below and realizing how far I had travelled in a mostly up direction.

Rawley Mine Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Rawley Mine Colorado by sublunar

Sunday, July 31, 2022

--Check out my video from this trip here.--

Leadville is a mountain town in central Colorado which was inhabited as early as the 16th century by the Ute Nation people. To the north of the Gunnison River the Ute Nation was mostly comprised of the Parianuche or "elk people". During the warm season, the Parianuche lived along the headwaters of the renowned Arkansas River in the area that later came to be known as Leadville. After spending the warm season along the headwaters, they moved to lower elevations in the winter. This was more or less the routine for some 300+ years before their home was invaded by people desperate to strike it rich by blasting tunnels and digging holes through the earth.

On April 26, 1860, placer gold was discovered in California Gulch one mile east of present-day town. By the end of the year, 10,000 people were living here and $2M in gold had been extracted. The good times didn't last long, however, when in 6 short years, the gold ran out and with it followed most of the town's inhabitants. It was around this time (1868) that the last of the indigenous Ute people were pushed out of the headwaters area for good as their new neighbors schemed up new "treaties" by which to take more of their land in hopes of striking it rich.

Leadville was practically a ghost town by the 1870's when some of the remaining prospectors discovered that the material which had been clogging their sluice boxes all this time actually contained about 15 ounces of silver per ton. These prospectors tried to keep the discovery a secret but that didn't last long and a decade later, Leadville had grown to become the second largest city in Colorado. It wasn't until ~1878 that Leadville even had an official name and by 1880, the town had "gas lighting, water mains, 28 miles of streets, 5 churches, 3 hospitals, six banks and a large school". Mail was carried from the post office here to Denver and the round trip took about one week. Leadville had several newspapers by the end of the 1870's and The Chronicle newspaper was the first in America to employ a full-time female reporter. William Nye, not the science guy, opened the first saloon in 1877, followed shortly by many others. A sign reportedly hung in one of the saloons which read "Please don't shoot the pianist, he is doing his best."

In 1879, Interlaken Hotel and Resort was constructed on the edge of Twin Lakes just outside of town. Originally called Lakeside Resort, James V. Dexter bought the property and expanded it to create one of the finest such establishments in the country. The resort included a pool hall, Dexter's cabin, a 16-horse stable, dance pavillion and a state-of-the-art octagonal outhouse. The prosperity didn't last long, however, and after a few modifications which were made in subsequent years to the lake and dam, the road to Interlaken was submerged and the only way to access the resort was now by boating across the lake or taking a ~5 mile trail. The site was eventually abandoned until the 1970's when the buildings were stabilized and preserved. Today you can visit the site and even go inside the amazing Dexter's Cabin. When I had the fortune to visit Interlaken, we took a kayak across the lake and it was a surprisingly rough trip battling waves and cold wind.

As with the previous post, this trip occured a little over a week after having surgery to put my collarbone back together so I had no business doing half of this stuff, but I'm, professionally speaking, "a dumbass". This situation meant my arm was useless and strapped across my body in a sling so I was working the camera while stumbling around left-handed and one-armed*, **. *Further difficulties on this part of the trip include the fact that I had been couch-ridden at sea level for the prior 3 weeks with a serious injury then suddenly hobbling up and down mountains at over 10,000 feet in elevation. This is the kind of experience that will make even the least introspective among us question our recent decisions. **To make things worse, it was storming pretty hard most of the time I was out here which resulted in some of the roads being flooded and the wet and uneven lanscape was not the easiest thing to hike across. In trying to get around some of the water by vehicle, I discovered that many of the roads out here aren't roads so much as they are creek beds or rock garden boulder scrambles. Google maps sent me down some routes that I wasn't sure I'd make it through with an intact vehicle. I spent at least 50% of my time out here bouncing and slamming around on the rocks in a rented vehicle driving through routes that aren't actually roads except in google maps' active imagination. County Road 1a, for example is a goddamn creek bed. But if you drive along this particular creek bed, as I was able to confirm, you do end up on top of a large pile of rocks with a commanding view of the area and I'll give google credit: that's where I was navigating us to. But there was a much easier route on an actually paved road I could have taken instead and which is the route I originally chose. But I made it back without re-breaking any bones or flipping the rented Jeep off a mountain, so that's what's important. Colorado has shown to me once again that while it is truly awesome it remains surprisingly exhausting and treacherous to explore.

sublunar / jackass
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Disclaimer: I had the opportunity to visit this site recently so I didn't pass it up despite the fact that I recently broke my collarbone and was only about a week and a half post-surgery with my right arm in a sling and completely useless. So this is the work of a one-armed crippled idiot.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Leadville Colorado Unnamed Mine #1

The first mine here is about 100 years newer than the rest of its neighbors but its relative youth was no advantage as it shut down after less than 10 years in operation.

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Saint Louis Mine - Leadville Colorado

While exploring the Leadville mining district just east of downtown Leadville, I encountered a Leyner pump sitting among the ruins just outside of the St. Louis Tunnel. The Saint Louis mine located here was involved in an interesting claim dispute with the overlapping Miner Boy mine and before it was over, the surface structures of both mines had been thoroughly burned to the ground. Leyner, the name on the pump sitting outside the mine, was a name practically synonymous with early mining history; It was said of J. George Leyner that "no man has done as much in the past generation to advance the art of removing rock." Among many other notable works, Leyner designed the "water-flushed drill". The new Leyner drill revolutionized mining and saved countless lives at a time when tens of thousands of miners died annually from the effects of Silicosis which was a terrible disease caused by excessive inhallation of rock dust. Shortly after the Leyner drill was introduced, many states banned the former method of "dry" mining. Another interesting St. Louis connection here is that the J. George Leyner Engineering Works won the grand prize at the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis and this was a catalyst which helped propel the company forward tremendously, at which time they began a series of expansions. In 1912, Leyner sold various distribution and patent rights on his rock drills and compressors to Ingersol-Rand Company, with whom his own company would go on to have a long partnership. Leyner eventually turned his attention to the agricultural industry where he saw room for improvement. He thus created the most excellent and awesomely named "Linapede" tractor, whose name was a result of the fact that it drove on tracks rather than wheels. One feature which made it particularly unique is the fact that the front and rear track's axles could both be rotated to allow the vehicle to make sharp turns-so sharp, in fact, that it could turn in a circle whose radius is less than the length of the tractor. I'm not sure how popular these tractors were, however, and I am unable to locate any examples of these machines which still exist. Having learned the history of Leyner, I personally found it very fucking cool to have located what appears to be an extant, original, Leyner water-flushed drill compressor house with a boiler and other related debris sitting outside one of the mines that it helped carve out over a century ago.

The Saint Louis Mine below, featuring the Leyner pump house and the St. Louis Tunnel (now collapsed).

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Stumptown

This area in particular, "Stumptown" was one I tried to reach but I couldn't get down to these buildings due to the road being flooded. I tried going the only other direction and wound up going up a very steep boulder climb only to get to the other side and find another section that was flooded too deep to risk.

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

New Monarch Mine

This is the Ore Bin of the New Monarch Mine and is one of the more complete ruins out here.

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Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Emmett Mine

The Emmett mine, in the first 3 photos below, was the scene of one of the battles which resulted from the 1896-1897 Leadville Miner's Strike.

The Leadville miner's strike lasted 9 months from June 19, 1896 to March 9, 1897. Before it was over, the Western Federation of Miners would wage bloody war against the wealthy industrialists who controlled the mines. The union demands were reasonable and included fair pay, shorter hours and better working conditions. The mine owners were filthy rich industrialists who were well organized and didn't care what the miners wanted. They fought solely to protect their profitability.

This was a time of considerable changes to, and consolidation of, the mining industry. As mines became more industrialized, owners became increasingly separated from actual mining activites. The mine owners in turn became less sympathetic to the concerns of the miners themselves. By the time the smaller operations consolidated with large firms, mine owners tended to be wealthy bankers and businessmen who only cared about profit and who had never stepped foot in a mine.

One of the key events that lead up to the strike was the Panic of 1893, during which the price of silver dropped by 37.5%. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act had just passed and the details of the act inadvertently caused a run on gold, tanking the price of silver. Mining companies immediately reduced miner's wages to $2.50/day in order to conserve profit and naturally, they kept the wage decrease in effect long after the panic was over.

The unions advocated for basic things such as 8 hour work days. Denver had begun enacting 8 hour days back in 1890 but by 1896 it was still common for some Leadville mine employees to work 12 hour shifts. They also, understandably, asked for decent wages paid in legal tender instead of company credit. They also asked for health care for miners and for disarming of guards and friendly relationships with employees. Mine owners claimed that they hadn't made a dollar in two years. Curiously, however, 1895 marked the highest overall output over the past 6 years and, in reality, Leadville had become Colorado's largest mine camp, having produced 9.5 million ounces of silver. The mine owners openly antagonized the miners in a variety of ways. In 1894, a Leadville mine owner ordered the superintendent to "put off payday until say, the 10th or 15th' so that stockholders could be paid a dividend. Mine owner John F. Campion was even so bold and stupid as to be observed buying Italian marble and other luxuries while the strike was going on, at a time when the owners claimed they "hadn't made a dollar". In 1889, Leadville miners went to Denver to help pass a mine inspection bill that sought to improve worker conditions in the increasingly deep and dangerous mines. The bill passed, but nothing changed because the state failed to fund the program.

In May of 1896, a group of union representatives approached several mine managers to ask for their pay to be reinstated back to $3/day. The mine owners refused to even acknowledge the union. They tried again a month later and had about the same luck. Later that same day, Cloud City Miner's Union Local 33 held a meeting where it was decided that all workers still earning the old wage of $2.50/day will strike. At 11:30 that night, 968 miners walked out which forced a number of mines to shut down. The mine owners responded by locking out all the rest of the mines and turning off the dewatering pumps. Over 2,000 miners were now out of work and the entire mining district went silent while the mines slowly filled with water. Unbeknownst to the miners, the mine owners secretly agreed to form their own union insofar as they all agreed to act as one and to continue to not recognize the union.

Due to the fact that the natural progress of unchecked capitalism is corporations owning politicians and the police, it's only natural that the mine owners also effectively owned the police and most business and community leaders at this time. Furthermore, John Campion, the same guy who was busy dealing with the logistics of purchasing Italian marble during the strike, used some of the vast wealth the miners earned for him to hire detectives from a handful of detective agencies to spy on the union. In July 1896, the union acquired rifles and formed squads of "regulators" to expel any potential strikebreakers from coming to work at the mines. Ultimately they were not successful and the Coronado and Emmett mines soon re-opened at the lowered $2.50/day wage.

Despite warnings from union leadership to "keep out of mischief" and "any violation of the law or disturbance of the peace.. is treason to the cause", on September 21 1896, about 50 armed strikers attacked the Coronado mine with the intention of destroying the shaft house. As it burned, the strikers shot and killed a fireman; Foreman of Hose Company #2, 24 year old Jerry O'Keefe, was shot from behind while trying to extinguish the fire. Three strikers ultimately died from from mine workers who returned fire in defense of the Coronado mine. It was only after armed citizens took to the streets (Coronado was surrounded by residences) to chase off the attackers that firemen were able to get to the scene and stop the blaze. The next target was the Emmett mine where a home-made cannon was used to blow a hole through a defensive wall. As the strikers attempted to breach the wall, they were held back by strikebreakers and forced to retreat. One striker was killed in this attack. As a result of these shenanigans, the National Guard was moved in and by that night, some 653 guardsmen were on location. The arrival of the National Guard sealed the fate of the strike which finally relented on March 9 1897 when they agreed to return to work at the $2.50/day wage.

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Miscellaneous Leadville finds:

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Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar

Leadville Colorado copyright 2024 sublunar
Leadville Colorado by sublunar