Rosalie - Forgotten Town - Remembered Cemetery

i'm the rockhopper today we're going to explore a long forgotten mining area in the desert where people lived underground [Music] the mojave desert holds tight within its clutches many secrets and reveals them only to those who are willing to get off the beaten track and explore its vastness hidden within a remote corner of the mojave is an enigma of who was here and how long ago in what appears to be a mining town or area out here temperatures in the summer are routinely in the hundreds so the best and most efficient way to escape the heat back in the 1800s and early 1900s was to be living underground so they carved out their shelters their little houses out of the dirt and lived under a rock shelf inside the earth and in the winter when it got cold well they probably had a little stove pipe for their wood stove right here now that's how they kept warm i don't know if these guys had any windows but this would have been their view here's what looks to be what might have been an old coffee can many of these underground structures have collapsed through the years and it would have been about 10 15 maybe even 20 degrees cooler living within the earth like these guys did and i have noticed that the doorways and the way these houses are facing is north so they would be really sheltered from the sun today they're not very tall inside but that's probably because the earth has filled in the bottom through numerous rains and bringing salt and mud inside let's duck our heads and go inside this one and have a look it looks pretty spacious as these things go probably goes back about 20 feet well maybe 15. well they even carved out a little shelf right here and you could put things on there some bottles a candle whatever so as you can see it's just total earthen walls all around and a little alcove in here or well a connection to the next one i guess this one is the most well preserved of all of them so let's step inside and have a look around well that had a wooden roof looks like the pack rats are nesting up in there now and a pretty sturdy beam there nice big beams [Applause] yeah it goes back about yeah about 12 15 feet maybe got some bird nesting up in there at one time so they're the local residents now and it's just yeah just a lot of mud and dirt of course like i say a lot of this is probably filled in through the years with the rains pushing the dirt inside this one still got a screen so i guess they didn't have windows they had screens looking out the door still got an old hinge there this was somebody's house but the whole top rock appears to have caved in and there's a look inside of what's left of this house so there was this whole little community right here of people living underground here's one where the dirt fell away and the rock we'll go around and go to the front door and have a peek in well this is interesting they had like their own little walkway here to their front door which is right here and like the other one they carved out shelves and in the back there you can see the big beam timbers still the finest in underground living right here at hell's half acre estates so i'm seeing a lot of slabs right here and this one has a lot of pipes so i'm wondering if this was like the shower room bathroom and such now these slabs over here are smaller and they have no pipe i don't know what those would have been there's a lot of would appear to be pipe drain pipe openings along here and they go all around so that's why i would guess maybe it was like a shower stall bathroom type place this looks like it could have been one of the mines here and right next to it i'm wondering if this was also part of the mine i'm not sure what all this concrete is right here what these were it doesn't appear to be any kind of living space more concrete walls here some old springs in the dirt so i'm seeing here what appears to be what may have been a pipeline of sorts so if this was a year-round operation which it does appear to be you would need a lot of water for drinking bathing and such and this could have been the storage for it an elaborate water storage facility yeah that would be my guess this one also may have been another water storage [Music] facility [Music] ceramic pipe looks like it would pour off the liquid down into what may have been a holding tank i'm not sure what they may have been mining here of course the miners were looking for the big dollar items like gold and silver but there were other things mined as well like copper lead possibly zinc and other metals a couple more houses here let's take a look inside these might have been the low rent houses i say low rent because these guys have doorways that are facing southeast so they wouldn't have as much protection from the sun as the other guys this one looks really barren nothing much in here just some old nails with some wires on the wall there looks like this was once a living space at one time another one of those little underground houses and right next to it is this one oh wow looks like there's some honeycomb up in there i don't see any bees so have a look at all that honeycomb and this one still has the wooden roof above in pretty good condition some paper tack to the wall there maybe they covered the insides with wallpaper over here they nailed some kind of paper up on the boards there's another underground house something gave way here and just below it is this pipe right here and not far from that pipe more concrete another underground house inside this one is an old tree and it's dead so this place is so old that a tree sprouted and grew and lived out its entire lifespan and died right here inside this house an old can you can tell it's really old because if you look at the top you see the puncture marks from the can opener more rusted out cans some of them more rust than cans one's pretty much disintegrated shut up man yeah what do you gotta get spinners anyway this large area here appears to be mining waste it's like a hardened tar you can see it does look like it was in a liquid form there's a look at that tar-like substance another area here that is a big old tree looks to be a cottonwood boy i wish that thing could talk the stories it would have i wonder what it saw i wonder what kind of activity was here all the crazy things that may have happened i wonder if anybody was hanged on that tree keeping that old cottonwood tree company is this very large tire i remember seeing tires like these on icelandic four-wheel drive vans there was a house of some kind here you can see the steps right there and i don't know if it burned down or what may have happened to it there may have been an adobe house here but that's about all that's left of it i have an old map it's pretty much in tatters now but hey old maps are sometimes the best maps right and it makes no reference to anything over here in the mining area that we just looked at but it does have an indication that there may be a cemetery nearby somewhere out in this area out here so let's have a look shall we the cemetery is supposedly out there somewhere all righty off through the creosote we go looking for the cemetery old cans and pieces of metal along the way wire and whatnot up ahead there i'm seeing what looks to be railroad ties or some kind of fence i'm gonna shoot for that getting closer to that fence now check it out looks like we found the cemetery rosalie cemetery huh so i wonder if that area i just explored was actually called the town of rosalie let's have a look inside wow this is kind of cool it's like an old pioneer cemetery look down here do not think of me as gone i am with you still in each new dawn this is pretty awesome way out here somebody's still giving love to this cemetery taking care of it a little rose right there by the cross people put in rocks this one says the one who put gentle footprints on our heart hearts you know why don't we just set that back up there that's better looks like it was just a baby this is so cool somebody hand painted all of these no longer by our side but forever in our hearts and then you go down here every tear we shed for you becomes a star above you stroll in angel's garden lit by everlasting love this is really cool somebody places old artifacts and whatnot here an angel in the joshua tree this one says life may last for a moment memory can make that life last forever read that one this one says may you always have an angel by your side we should all have that i hate to have to point out that whisper is spelled wrong but i applaud the effort just whisper my name in your heart and i will be there an old can of some kind beneath the sun symbol on the fence though here at journey's end i lay in darkness buried deep beyond all towers strong and high beyond all mountains steep above all shadows rides the sun and stars forever dwell i will not say the day is done nor bid the stars farewell look at the cemetery some of the headstones are newer i wonder if they were descendants of the pioneers look at that little shelf with rock collection there very appropriate for miners so these are the newer headstones but look at the dates when these people were born 1911 1888 1876 1918 1914 joseph riser 1887 to 1908 on the side of joseph's headstone the voice i loved is forever stilled a place is vacant in my heart which never can be filled looks like another baby that passed away here butted on earth to bloom in heaven you are my angel my darling my star and my love will be with you wherever you are sometimes love is for a moment sometimes love is for a lifetime sometimes a moment is a lifetime sometimes a moment does seem like a lifetime especially when you're standing in line at the grocery store this one says my story is still yet told by the winds that blow through the sage and there's plenty of wind out here you can believe that many of the burial sites are just mounds of dirt unmarked with just some rocks on top some of them quite colorful those we love don't go away they walk beside us every day well let's put this back up somewhere though my body be in darkness i will rise in perfect light i have loved the stars to fondly to be fearful of the night maybe it won't blow away now i'm really impressed by whoever went to the trouble to hand paint all these signs and keep this cemetery and the people buried within it to keep their memory alive and i appreciate the authenticity and the rusticity of this cemetery the old artifacts and the rocks that people have placed give it a certain flavor [Music] [Music] i hope you enjoyed exploring the forgotten mining area and the remembered cemetery of rosalie deep in the mojave desert you keep on subscribing and i'll keep taking you to intriguing finds in remote areas until next time this is a rockhopper i'll see you again [Music] you