Chloride City Ghost Town - Death Valley

hello everyone it is stephen and andrea from pin in the atlas and again today we find ourselves up in the mountains you may recognize that scenery down there so where are we today well we're high in the funeral mountains of death valley and we're at a ghost town called chloride city now although silver was discovered here back in the 1870s the town was established in 1905 but closed a year later let's explore here lies james mckay now it's funny because absolutely nothing else is known about this gentleman not even the in the death valley main website the national park website they have no knowledge of who james mckay is but this grave has been here for donkey's years i wonder who he was then or if this is a legitimate grave don't know one of the mysteries of death valley and there are many next little thing is this small cabin put together with some corrugated metal and things on the outside some rocks on the roof keep those from flapping around too much in the wind this is a very well traveled area so i highly doubt there's anything left inside but one never knows oh wow there's a little mine entrance at the back oh check that out okay there's like maybe a bed frame metal box here not too many bullet holes so that's nice shall we venture in see how far that goes yeah i can't imagine it going too far because the park service have blocked up most of the mine shafts and mine tunnels oh and they have on this one as well oh there you go just a little further inside okay let me just put the i see there's a bunch of debris does it look like it's creeped in it does and they tried to fill it in no that's a was that well i can see daylight oh that's up on the hill we saw it coming in it's all collapsed so as i mentioned earlier silver was discovered here in 1873 and this was one of the earliest mines in the whole of death valley and at the time the nearest city was in san bernardino which was 180 miles away and the silver was shipped by mule trains all the way to san bernardino and then on their return trip they were loaded up with the supplies for the miners that is quite the trip for supplies 180 miles one way yep so it wasn't until 1905 that the town was actually built right that is incredible pretty amazing true story now you can see that collapse and where they've graded that off and that collapse runs all the way up there you can see the grave a small little workshop in front of the mine entrance and over there looks like that could be another shaft potentially so we will continue making our way up this little miner's road here so that just dead ends to another massive mine shaft that's all collapsed similar to the one that you've just filmed just like a huge crack oh okay so and gaping right so we're not going that direction then there's another mine shaft there that's also gated over which is a sheer drop it looks like let's continue so i was going to go down there and see how far down that shaft goes but i slipped a little bit on the rocks so that was my cue to get back out of there [Music] and another road to climb up got another good view of the valley see there's a road down there we're gonna go back down that one you see they wind all the way up through the mountains but that little cabin there that's our next destination this is the road we're traversing down stop about halfway you can see some of the old roads crisscrossing up the mountainside there tailing pile right there and then this is what remains of the old mill one of three in this site laid it down so we'll get a closer look at this little structure here not very big the screen window a bunch of tin all over the outside and a very short doorway what's in there pickle pack right nest what was in there and that was a little storage cabin cabinet or something cupboard i'm not sure what this would have been got a nice sturdy rock wall on that side they've built up good for insulation and it's kind of built down in this little mountainside the hillside so kind of uh hard to tell it's close to the uh the mill so i don't know if they would have had a cabin that close or if it was like a little workshop or storage for tools and things so you get the size of that doorway you can actually hear the rat moving around in there yeah so this is just what metal cans and well not tin cans but because they're all different textures well that one's corrugated metal you just touched this one no this one yeah that's normally for roofing and stuff the smaller don't know what that could have come from obviously repurposed and then further down here is the wash and the remains of something else there that looks like it was a a little mine going in it's not filled in now yeah and there's another one to the right i can get a closer look no nothing no it says tailing piles you can see at the top there's some pretty interesting stuff in the wash that's right oil collects oil cans and i don't know what that is that's the firewall of a vehicle and 55 gallon barrels water barrels oil canisters tin cans mattress frames another interesting find what do you make of that i don't know it's got shelves it's got mesh on the side of a tin roof so obviously some sort of storage it's just the mesh that i find interesting or intriguing [Music] this looks like an entrance to maybe uh some storage see how the rock wall is fighting with the lumber at the moment it looks like it's gonna win let's turn the flashlight on and okay oh it's bigger than i thought down there looks like you got the top to a stove another bit so maybe this was the kitchen area there's some shelving looks like a little little spot there maybe we could do the dishes what a great view and look at the striation in the rock a little burn barrel down there see some charring up on the rock which leads up to the vent pipe it's a nice little stove keep it it would have been nice and toasty in here it's very nice and cool in here right now i see the size of the timbers so this was built very sturdily now little pac rats call it home all right we'll make our way back out what you got there i think i found some fool's gold some pirate i think so you see it glistening yeah it's quite a bit of it on the ground it does look pretty [Music] we're at the site of the second stamp mill you may have noticed in a few shots that water tower looming in the distance we reached it we've got to say there really is not much left to this side the hoist looks like it's been burnt down a lot of charring on the wood and some of it's almost half half burned through but this is a a little or shoot here at least i take yeah i'm sure that is a shoot and it goes out there to that pile so all of that waste once went through i've here noticed down there there's another one of those strange containers or strange shelving units but that one's got metal both sides as well as the roof um shall we go get a closer look [Music] these are pretty intriguing once you get a closer look it's got this bolt it's got a roller on it and further down in there there's a gear sprocket we got some bolts right there on that mechanism turn it don't know what that was hooked to as i showed earlier that's the other piece still got some brackets and things on the side here this was concaved that's uh sheared off possibly orbins type of a bin or something then again more scattered remains down there and then we'll show you where we've come from okay this hill directly in front of us to the right that's that one little cabin we explored on the opposite side over here is where that other little entrance to the mine had like a workshop cabin thing in front and the grave and then just up over there was was that other little cabin carved out of the rock so we've got to make our way back out that direction the one thing that we haven't come across is a tin dump a can dump that we have not yet now i do know there's a massive ore bin but it's way over the other side and to hike there would take us at least an hour so i think we might have to give that one a miss yeah we'll get a shot of it on the way [Music] out [Music] all right everybody that's the end of the video of our tour around chloride ghost town now we would like to give you a few tips on how you can stay safe while you're out and about in the desert now we all know this but do we all do it and that's take plenty of water with you the amount of times we go out hiking and we see people with just a small bottle it's really isn't enough when you're hiking out in the desert you dehydrate so quickly both steven and i have backpacks mine holds three liters steven's holds five liters of water and when that's halfway gone we know it's about time to turn around and head back to the car and also always let somebody know where you're going and when you are due to return we give our gps coordinates out to my sister and the time that we should be finished up and also wherever possible travel with somebody just in case you just never know there are lots of other things that you can do which we don't like a gps what are they called those personal locator beacons we don't have one of those however tonto is fitted with one and if we get into trouble in the car we can just press a button and it goes straight to emergency services using satellite so we do have that we do plan on getting the the gps personal locator beacons and also snake guards that's something that we've looked into and that is something that we do need to purchase at some point yes but if you would like a full list of other things that we bring on every single adventure you can head over to our website paintingtheatlas.com and choose that from the drop down menu up top that's on the resources page by the way and on that note get out there go and explore put another pin in the atlas and we will see you on our next adventure bye [Music] you