Finding an old mining town - 11/15/21
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.
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.