Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Finding an old mining town

Buddy and I went out looking for an old mining community last year. It's not where it's shown on old maps but we had a theory where it might be. No one has been able to find it in over 100 years. We camped for the weekend with the girls and forded a creek to spend the afternoon looking around a hillside. We found some hydraulic mining pipes and misc scrap on that trip. I posted some photos last year of it.

This year we did some weekend work for the extra money to get a metal detector setup. First trip in we found a few metal scraps and some bent nails. Also found what looked like a faint roadway through the forest. Along the roadway we found some wires that looked like lantern hooks, maybe used to light the roadway? Couldn't positively identify any campfire rings, building sights, or much of anything except a ditch for carrying water from 1/2 mile upstream across the hillside to this spot. We figured with the hydraulic mining pipe and ditch we were on it.

Anyway, we finally made it back in today. We got sidetracked rescuing some people that were camping and every battery they had was dead. Car, truck, travel trailer, jumper, cell phones, all of them. Finally got free by 3pm to start looking around for more mining artifacts. Right out of the gate the creek was much higher than during summer low flow so we had to find logs to cross on. After getting across the metal detector gave an error signal until we figured out a connection had come loose. We got it running and hit the brush. It was hard scanning because there were low blackberry vines constantly snagging the detector, and trees down everywhere. We had lots of branches and logs to work over, around and through. Knowing this site was over 100 years old we tried to picture which trees would not have been here and what it would have looked like back then.

We detected around for a couple hours finding one square nail, a couple round ones, and some misc small scrap when I finally see another large hydraulic pipe in the brush up against a hillside. When we detected around it we started finding bolts and metal handles, or flat bars.

Then, we hit something big. Sorry I can't figure out the audio, but here's some short video of what we found if I can make it work.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/8qazWOp.mp4[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/9qsLAXN.mp4[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/S0qtlG9.mp4[/img]

We unearthed some wagon axles, levers, and hardware. As we looked around the metal detector was going off all over the place. We were running out of daylight when we spotted this barely visible above a couple downed logs. We uncovered all we could but it has a tree root growing through the middle of it so we couldn't get it out w/o a saw.



Just a little wagon hardware I could fit in my sweatshirt pocket.




We don't know if we have it for certain, but we are getting optimistic that we may have rediscovered at least the mining site. We're not finding evidence of buildings yet. there's a lot of debris buried yet that needs to be explored. Had a fun day in the Oregon mountains.

Sounds like fun!

It was! I wish I could get the audio to play, we sound like a couple of school girls we're so excited.

With lugs like that wagon wheel rim has on it you know it couldn't have ever been used on the road. We wondered if maybe they used the two axles to haul the metal hydraulic mining pipe down the half mile of ditch, throwing it off as they came down the ditch, then abandoning the axles when they got all the pipe laid. We hope to access the same ditchway with our quads and a small trailer to get back in there. We'll have to saw and clear our way in because there's trees down everywhere. If the girls go with us we'll light them a big fire while we clear all the forest debris then detect the entire site for remaining hardware. We hope to find the remaining three wheels and hubs. All the wood has long since rotted away.

As near as we can tell this site is from circa 1905.

I can definitely think of worse ways to spend your time.


Good choice.

Nice job Roy. Metal detecting is a fun hobby. My garage is full of axe heads, square nails and ox shoes. I pretty much stopped bringing big stuff home, although I couldn’t resist throwing the cast iron sewing machine I dug recently in the back of the truck. Hope you find the mine camp. Bunkhouse and trail to outhouse are good places to detect. And where they washed up in the creek. Once you learn your detector with practice, you will have an idea of what it’s telling you.

We're novices on detectors for sure.

Cool stuff.

Be careful who you share with if you're working on public lands.

Yep^^
My wife posted some pics on Farcebook of some items we found at a ghost town my grandmother was born in. State Historical Society lady responded to her the next day that was a no-no.
Wife promised we'd return the items. We may.....someday.

Someday.

In the future.

Ha!

Cool find, Fireball!

I used to explore around the Sterling Mine area out by the Little Applegate River..... lots of old mines and a ton of hydro debris fields. There used to be some old cabins nearby, but they were destroyed and lost to us. I found cartridge boxes for stuff I’d never even heard of! A detector would have been real useful back then.....

Not just the trail to the outhouse but the outhouse itself. Many things get lost down privy holes like knives, wallets, etc. It's all turned to dirt after all those years but many guys get turned off at the idea of digging one up.

Looks like a lot of fun. The UP of Michigan is full of old mining towns. I’ve never done it but have family that spent extended vacations camping up their exploring old logging and mining towns that are essentially ghost towns today.

My brother Martin lives in Ararat Victoria and does a lot of detecting for gold, I have been out with him and must admit that it is not for me...if I am going to traipse across a paddock I would prefer carry a rifle and hunt.

I would too. Is it possible to do both, walk around or ATV with rifle in hand and make a casual hunting and shooting targets of opportunity event out of it?

Probably not a good idea as I am pretty sure if I had a rifle with me at the time I would have gladly used that damned squealing detector for target practice.

Sounds like a bucket full of fun right up 'til the squealing bugger starts annoying the crap out of you...then gold quickly loses it's appeal.

😂

What do you mostly hunt down their? I’d imagine kangaroos are everywhere (maybe there not and it’s my ignorance). I know that you have water buffaloes, donkeys, and camels in some places but no idea how widespread.

I didn’t intend to sidetrack the thread FB but it seems PM’s aren’t excepted.

No buffalo or such around here (that is further north)...pigs, goats (for meat), some deer (for meat), as many rabbits as you like (mostly for dog meat), the usual fox, cats, dogs.

Not at all like the hunting utopia you fellows inhabit.

Extremely cool!

Sounds like a great time and sounds like you have more varmints to hunt than my location. What do you do with those kangaroo’s are they edible?

Pockets of the US are great for all around hunting. Several of the western states have a lot to offer and Alaska obviously does. My corner or the US offers great fishing, ATV and Snowmobiling, large tracts of public land in the northern half of the state, but is heavily forested and mostly limited to deer hunting as far as larger game goes.