Well Preserved Mining Camp with 4G Service,

good morning everyone it is steven and andrea from pin in the atlas you can see those massive tailing piles that we're at it's a beautiful crisp morning the sun is just starting to heat everything up but listen to the quiet the perfect area to camp and there's a lot to see here what is this place we're at an abandoned mercury mine in nevada and it was estimated that back in 1943 there were 2766 flasks of mercury taken out of this particular mine now mercury was discovered here in the very early 1900s and the place has been abandoned since the 1940s let's explore so the first item you might have seen behind andrea earlier is this contraption now this was a mercury mine so the process is different than others because you see normally a bin like this it would be like a ball mill where they could crush the ore down but mercury obviously is completely different so this looks like it turned whether or not it was turning horizontally or vertically i don't know but with all the little holes in it it looks like the process was um turning and the oar would be coming out of the holes maybe either that or it's just a gigantic washing machine drum [Laughter] interesting very much so and then just beyond it is the first little cabin we'll take a look in now this place like andrea said has been abandoned since the 40s right yeah i don't know whether or not some sort of mining went on in the 50s but the actual processing mercury mine was abandoned in the 40s so i believe all right look at how the wood down here start to rot away nails are popping out but it was originally clad in that roofing material which we have seen before here's a look inside the floors look in really good shape but they uh i yeah they moved quite a bit there let me just see if i can see how sturdy the floorboards are well they've all rotten and gone through over to my left very spongy should i take the camera and take it in okay let's just so you can see in the corner where all the floorboards have given way nice large window some sort of hanging contraption on the wall there and let's poke in this room and see all the ceiling has fallen down lots of rat droppings boarded up window over there in the corner a couple of water pipes and the floorboards are looking pretty crappy so i won't go in there working my way back you can see the ceiling is falling down above it's all wired for electrics yeah but you can see there's kind of like three lots of ceiling you've got the the tin and then some more boards and then the large boards for cladding and i don't know what the correct terminology for those large boards those are just um which ones are you the the big one that's flapping here oh those are um just like osb press board there you go osb press board apparently and we'll make our way back out to stephen there we go [Applause] oh i just here you can see there's the front door did you see what's written on the front door i don't know what that means and then there in the ceiling can see where the stove was to vent out and then it also against this back wall there's another door there i don't know if that was for that back room if that was a bathroom or if that's just an extra door somewhere [Applause] and we'll continue on so there's the cabin where we're just in we're going to continue up see they had a little bit of a retaining wall built up here the remains of a glass flagging on top there so we have this building and then the bunk house something like this next door i don't know if these were one of those just tool sheds extra supplies there's a bed frame in here in the corner and there's electricity in here hard to determine what this could have been there's a let's get over here on the other side [Applause] see that stainless piece right there and then that wood it created like a little box and it's got a hole there for like a drain possibly so that is interesting as you can see there they had all the amenities of home they could watch television after a hard day's work might have only been one channel but it's better than nothing you might be able to also get a sneak peek of some of the other buildings up on the hillside but first i'm gonna go through this this must be the bunk house [Applause] now i don't know how many miners worked here or stayed here during the mining operation but this still looks in pretty good condition yeah and you don't know if it's one of those situations where this is still original or people are coming out and helping refurbish some of these pieces [Applause] ah some of the woodwork is a bit gnarly yeah over there is uh should we start up this end and walk down [Applause] a plunger [Applause] it's a tobacco or cigarette tin lid on the floor [Applause] okay a little bit gnarly this first room looks like it was a bathroom or toilet two cubicles the water closet and you've also got a hole in the wall a hole in the wall hole in the floor for drainage and again wired for electricity yep okay so these bits might be a bit gnarly to tread on i'll let you go in there this is very large and again in the center of the room it's got some drainage it's all covered in wood so i don't think this would have been a shower room maybe a washroom it's got a boiler vent on to the right and then a little loft hatch to the left yeah and wallpaper wallpaper on the shelves the cement floors in here still have some carpeting in this room and the couch sofa bed wood planulin electrics right there now that uh electrical socket on the far wall looks very modern in comparison to what you would expect to see from the 40s these floorboards seem really solid here look at the silver bed [Applause] and the drywalls come down in here again modern electrical wires and sockets there and then obviously with the mason board not me some more drywall gypsum board and you can see through to the last room so i wonder how many men slept in here before continuing up to the other buildings this is the last one on this level it's got a very wide opening you see you got that vent pipe hanging on with some tie wire windows on every wall so again another bunk house room fit a couple miners with some bunk beds in there don't know there's a good look back down over the valley and where we've just walked up from you see those are the tailing piles from this morning now we're up above even with them we still got to go up those ones though this looks like the remains of the mill and it says keep out danger danger keep out danger bad holes so there must be some oh i can see now yeah the cement is it's okay yeah bro broken apart [Applause] wow seal the water pipes yeah that's what i'm wondering if there was some leaks and it's subsided the foundations [Applause] so we'll definitely stay out of that one a bunch of cracks all over here [Applause] and you can see that second post in along the top see how it's come away from the truss up there from the wind where you can see how the whole building is uh leaning and in shambles right there you can see the mechanism like the or shoot a little or shoot right there which would come down along this way and then back out that front wall is caved out [Applause] and there's another hole now it doesn't go down too far look at the color of the corrugated metal it's like it's all sunburnt you got this channel running through as well i always like looking at the building techniques that they used how vastly different it is today and in most cases not all that different and what's in this room back here some cardboard boxes looks like electrical cable and some workbenches have you seen how they've suspended the shelves with bits of wire so we have seen that before and we couldn't figure out whether or not the shelves were suspended on wire so that answers our question that's a uh a quick way to just um hold that up as you can see like the middle one still has a wire suspended the one on the left side you can see how it's leaning just up the little road adjacent to that mill site is this tiny little cabin this is one of the first tiny homes it looks like very small very humble got a wooden the porch does that go all the way over to the other one get a look at that we got a bench out here work pinch and this is like almost looks like decking that continues on unless this was still part of it and it's come down you can see there's metal and debris all over the place so there's that little cabin we just walked out of and over to this one water pipes in here yeah this looks like a kitchen sink with a drainer how it slopes down towards the to the center there yeah and i would say that this would be cold storage there's also a fly screen in there so definitely cold storage or a ladder of some sort wow look at the timbers that they used on the roof there they've got electric wiring yeah fly screens it's really the temperature is very cold in there let's back out because the ceiling is quite low see some rats have made a mess nest up in there this next room is a bit curious here's the funny little window in the door we've got the window in the door shelving and to the right this is a cupboard oh wow but you've also got it's like shelving all over the yeah you've also got kind of like a a top shelf very interesting the in the kitchen area kind of had the same thing going on so i'm wondering then you've got a bunk house with i don't know six ten twenty men they would have a cook that would cook for the whole men the whole of the men the troop so this might be that sort of area where they can wash prepare i know there's no stove but maybe i don't know just a silhouette yeah well if you're yeah i mean well maybe the cabin over there the outside was like the big barbecue area or something could be these were connected so this was all just guests you've got a quaint little window in the corner it's a little shelf i wonder if this was a little bedroom or something now this is awesome that's there's no stove in here though big pipe remains of a chair you've even got some cloth still on the door just above the mill and it looks like we have some more workshops let's start over here on the left with the smallest one and work down over towards the top of that mill site we've got the road to continue oh it's amazing let's take a look at this real quick that's had a major failure at the front there [Applause] look at the grass is growing [Applause] i don't see that a lot [Applause] it's not a footprints footprints here's some of the timbers that have come down there's some more underneath there let's see if i can carefully and also there's a lot of moisture in the ground so i wonder if this flooded [Applause] ah people have made their way down in there oh that is ice cold air coming out do you need a torch oh i won't be able to really get in here let me take your glasses they're the torches really really unstable you can see all the rocks yeah fractured well people braver than me have gone in there so this looks like it was part of the edit that's all caved in again look at the different color of the tin see this one's all sunburned that one's uh looks like galvanized [Applause] well they had a low in there by the looks of it yeah yep cement foundations a hot water heater then another one of those sink things whoosh area i wonder if this was a shower room this looks like this could have been shower room which is also uh like i said funny because it's all clad in wood i know by today's standards that's you definitely would not be doing that but so you do have like a a pipe here a drain floor drain yeah and there are pipes looks like where shower heads would have been this is a cool little building here it's neat isn't it old bucket on the floor paint bucket and then this obviously was covered at some point and the roofs come down by the looks of it it does look like that or was this the front wall perhaps oh maybe i wonder why they would wall it off and not put a roof so there definitely was had to have been a roof at some point but you can see all the shelving for all their bits and pieces for all the mine parts mill parts tools extra fittings this is a cyanide tank oh no because they didn't use cyanide for mercury did they now but they used uh what was that stills i've got a date that's inappropriate may 26 1939. oh wow that's cool yep oh and as a comparison here we go those are the electrical outlets you would be accustomed to seeing those are obviously older compared to the ones that were in the bunk house this is a natty little room a little work bench and windows and that would have been a stone stove yep you see how the earth behind it is trying to come in this is all piped up and there's a charring up there i don't think that i don't know whether or not that would be original or somebody's coming here and tried to have a campfire that wouldn't surprise me now that there looks like it was a door at some point door that's been repurposed because there's no hinges yeah and something was pinned to it got the old drawing pins oh here we go now this is a retort so this is very where they they fire up and heat up the mercury to get the vapor and they've got this is some riding on a few of these bricks can't read all of them someone is that delaware fire clay company not sure that's pretty neat we've got lots of uh things on the ground now this looks like at one point it was a determinate valve and then another little rope a bunch of shelving remains you've got a pipe coming up from the floor here which is where the stove would have been or some sort of vent because you've got a vent pipe up there yeah and i have no idea what's in here but i don't really want to disturb the dust stacked up in the corner yeah but look at the powder and we don't know what that is right yeah stay out stay alive yeah water container then here's the top side of the mill [Applause] you can see the state of it from this angle a bunch of it is missing all that cement is cracked ready to collapse down now this pole here with the cross on the top would that have been part of the electrics originally yeah come to one last little building just up around the mill site and that's it we've kind of scoured around up over here there's some more down in a different section but let me see if i can gracefully scramble up this hill and peek inside they had dual locks definitely didn't want people getting in here solid construction again i don't know if they would have kept explosives in here you would think they would have dug it to the mountainside but it's very sturdy all cladded metal as well so perhaps that's what it was or maybe this is where they kept the flasks before transporting clear on the other side of the camp you can see this might have been the start of another mining operation see there's a big orbit on the hill there to the left of that looks like there might be some tracks but we won't be climbing up there today but we will be checking out this little cabin i said we almost missed this one we just barely got a glimpse of it so i decided to walk over hello there do you uh can you come here often these are just little bits that obviously people have found a little tea cup for a nice cup of tea it's a base of a cup or a bowl hand painted made in taiwan homer laughlin made in the usa and it's got a little i don't know if you can zoom in on that it's got a little emblem on it it's pretty neat big lids that lizard during the sunshine i was going to say i'm interested in this piece over here oh there's another one just here poking his head up watching me you see him he's like hanging on he's like if i stay still they might not see me he's a cutie so this is a minus cabin obviously totally different from the cabins that we've just seen and quite a distance away so i'm guessing that [Applause] this was either the original prospector's house before the mine corporation brought the mine out or possibly the superintendent boss type of thing keeping him away from the main crowd i would say that there was a woman involved because of the teacups i like this old jerry can right here how old was that would that be shot full of bullet holes it's definitely been out here for a while that kind of reminds me of a military one yeah now unfortunately the porch has uh passed itself by date [Applause] that looks like it could have been the kitchen got like a kitchen sink just here and a stove and door laying on the floor there see what's inside i like how the walls are still in good condition same materials throughout all of the buildings well it had lino or a flooring of some sort you still see the remains of it all right there's a coat closet in the corner a little wardrobe very humble so would this be you can see the plug sockets as well so would this have been maybe the bedroom stroke living room and just the kitchen separate yeah one just big living area and sleeping area because this would have been the front door with the porch and it's got bars on the window around the other side [Applause] as i said mercury was discovered here in the early 1900s and then i know a mining corporation came in and bought the whole lot out oh look at these screens you can see these aren't bars at all it's where the window frames would have been that's neat so yes i think this could have been as i said the original miner or possibly the supervisor what do you think i like your idea now i've got a fun fact about uh mines in nevada did you know that there are over 200 000 known mines in the state of nevada and that's just the ones that they know about i read that on a mining uh website true story that's an incredible amount of minds i just noticed the uh big electrical socket input at the top there oh cold storage [Applause] yep another lizard hanging out on the side they're everywhere up here now this tin says stove oil oops on it and that is definitely a cold storage place cat's made out of cement shelving in the back looks like the door there now you know what's missing our house i haven't seen any remains of any sort of toilet not in this establishment anyway okay we may have found the loo right strange lou with the door like this door's small an insulator for a handle i'm not showing you it's a surprise oh take a look down there [Applause] oh creepy let me throw a rock down and see how far it goes [Applause] because there's a little full screw there i can see one i think let me get the torch out does that do any good at all oh it's water so that's filled up so would that have been originally a mine that's flooded or could that possibly be a well either one um well there's mining up above us so that could have been mining or like say yeah digging down to find a well and it uh flooded up i don't know so we still haven't found the low no and no explore is complete without a trip to the bathroom all right everyone that's going to wrap up this video thank you so much for coming along with us to explore this old mining camp yeah we hope you've enjoyed it as much as we've enjoyed poking around we still never found the loo anyway get out there go and explore put another pin in the atlas and we will see you on our next adventure bye [Music] you