Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors OT mining town discovery

Some here might enjoy this about an old mining community a buddy and I have been looking for.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...-finding-an-old-mining-town#Post16621852

sweet! like finding gold! man the stories of plain old hard work that wheel could tell!

Since we found a couple wagon axles we assumed this was a wagon wheel rim missing the hub and spokes, but flintlocke identified it as a Pelton water wheel used for generating power.

Neat stuff.

Its actually pre pelton wheel, the pelton wheels had buckets with a divider ridge in them.

that wheel looks like it was site built by a blacksmith. appears to have rivets thru the stabilizer struts on the fins/paddles?
the rim could be a repurposed wagon tire.
just plain neat. i'd set that in the corner of my living room, just as it is!

for about 5 minutes! would take that long for momma to throw one of us out.

mama's just don't have a sense of what's cool.

The center wooden part that housed the axle must have rotted away. It's hard to tell what the diameter is but seems like 2 feet or so.

The center wooden part that housed the axle must have rotted away. It's hard to tell what the diameter is but seems like 2 feet or so. Logging was big in Oregon too.

We're hoping all the other hits we got on the detector bring up some missing parts like the hub and hardware. Of note, this was real low in the ground and sat in a diversion trench that connected to the main ditch. Now that we know it's not a wagon wheel we get the layout. We thought it was in some sort of a "garage" or wagon parking spot.

Back before our year-long "fire season" closed many of the CA National Forests, I used to wander around up in the interior Coast Ranges, especially the Sierra Madre Mountains (NOT the MX ones....).

That area is "geologically complex" because it's where the CA "island" is most squashed up by continental drift--there are places where you can see in the road cuts that a rock stratum has performed almost a complete vertical loop in the space of a few hundred yards. And the wide variety and presentation of strata makes mining a very tricky business--"following a seam" is kinda hard when the "seams" have all been "folded, spindled, and mutilated" by Ma Nature over the last few zillion years....

Even in so-called "real time" you can see how it works because you can't be back there for more than a day or so without having a (hopefully) minor shaker. (The last range between the San Andreas Fault and the San Joaquin Valley is the Sierra Temblor/Earthquake Range). Because of the puzzling/tempting nature of the terrain, there have been many, many minor mineral rushes back there and when I'm hunting or just rambling, I'm always on the lookout for mines and mining stuff. Found lots over the years and much of it just got turned into $$ at my local salvage yard. But some, like bronze hose nozzles, went to local museums and the walls of local bars (actually "local" means at least 30 miles from where I ramble--there is NOTHING "local" up there but a few tote roads and lots of rock).

All those "gold rushes" netted little--the only big finds were a cubic mile of asbestos to fireproof the ships at the Kaiser shipyards, and oil, which is still producing along the margins of the ranges--but they sure left lots of interesting stuff. I especially like finding old cartridge cases on deer stands at the heads of arroyos running down from finger ridges. Last time I was up there (right before Mr. Covid) I found a dud nickeled .38 ACP softnose and two fired cases at a place like that, setting among all the green fired .30-30s. Wonder WHAT that old pistolero was shooting at? Or was he just expressing himself?

Sorry for the OT, but this thread and Fireball's neat find stimulated it some. I'd love to get back to exploring, but is it ever gonna @%#&ing rain here again?

Mike, I did find a dud 30-30 shell and a fired 45 acp this last trip out. Took the 30-30 shell apart and the powder looked fine, but had no powder odor like I'm used to. Put it back together. Thought about trying to fire it, but why?

Roy, any idea what they were mining there?

Gold brutha, gold!

Nice. I used to work for the Forest Service and part of my job was locating old sites like these in the woods. And being in the Sierra Nevada near the heart of the "Motherload" they were all over the place. One afternoon I chased down a line of old busted up penstock that had been laid on the side of a canyon eons ago. After about an hour of hiking I found the penstock had terminated at an old adit. And in the adit were two pnuematic hand drills with their star bits leaning up against the wall as if the miners had just left. Below the adit was a concrete pad with a huge two stage Chicago Pnuematic (CP) air compressor bolted to the surface. And in the drainage below that was a Pelton Wheel half buried in debris. Nobody had been to that site in decades. How the hell that stuff got in there was almost beyond belief as it was in a very remote location. All I can say is that it was all packed into the woods back in the day when men had strong backs to put into their work.

maybe they used a helicopter

And it would be considered nuts to use anything short of that today. Having walked a fair portion of the central Sierra Nevada in my career and seen the remains of mining and logging operations from the late 1800s/early 1900s I have always been amazed at the amount of work that was accomplished in those days with a level of human effort that many would consider nearly impossible by today's standards of work.

between Coarsegold and Raymond Calif. there is a old mine with a 1906 Buick just inside the mouth. the road into the mine has long since eroded away. i have spent 60 years dreaming of how to get that car out!

Get the Buick out with a helicopter. That is what they used to put a new irrigation gate way up in the wilderness (it's wilderness now) for the water for a ranch I helped out on some. And got to hunt elk there. The original gate was gotten up there by a vehicle of some sort. We can see a faint road in a few places along the horse trail. Roads are a no-no in uncle sam's wilderness. They wouldn't even let the helo land. It had to hover and lower the new parts. The owner had a real hassle with the wilderness pukes but they couldn't keep him from repairing the gate. It was grand-fathered in before it was wilderness.

it has taken me 3 months to get a flintlock to finish stage David. i need a car project about as much as i need a dose of clap.
sure would look cool with those brass lamps on the front polished though.