Despite the massive scale of this tunnel complex, I believe you would be surprised by how little information (at least publicly) is available on the construction and operation of this site during its heyday. We were, fortunately, able to locate a few scraps of information though, which I will share below: Our initial attraction to this tunnel was solely a result of an adit being marked on the topographic map at this location. Some research indicated evidence of a historical placer mining operation at the site and so we assumed the two were connected. However, there was a fair amount of skepticism on our part as that location does not intersect any of the ancient river channels that we know of and, simply, it seemed an odd location for an underground placer mine.
Expecting a little prospect or an old, caved adit of modest proportions, you can imagine our surprise at what we actually encountered.
Further research following our visit found the last record of work done at this tunnel was in the 1960s (the castoffs we discovered underground seem to corroborate that) and uncovered a handful of grainy photographs.
The details of the photographs?
One showed what looked like a full-sized tractor trailer with multiple drills mounted on the back that could be raised and lowered as well as adjusted in all directions. Those large wrapped hoses I pointed out? Those were observed in the photograph, supplying air to pneumatic drills and other pneumatically-driven equipment. Remember how large those hoses were? Kind of gives you an idea of the scale of everything here…
Another photograph showed a massive mucker mounted on rails. The picture showed two sets of rails, side-by-side, with a wooden platform mounted between. Behind the mucker was a conveyor belt and so the mucking machine would have heaved the blasted rock back onto the conveyor where it would have then been carried out of the tunnel. So, they were, obviously, moving a LOT of rock down there!
I haven’t seen pictures of more than small sections of the ventilation system required for this operation, but it must have been immense.
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really makes a difference.
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here:
And a small gear update here:
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here:
Thanks for watching!
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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.
These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.
So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
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