Large Scale Central

An odd gold mill and its strange demise

Prototypes
#21

Cliff Jennings said:

Especially in view of all the amazing trips you do Ray, I sure get where you’re coming from. Have you been to this place?

Nope. Wish I’d had a chance to check it out before it was gone. I generally don’t put much effort into visiting old sites near populated areas because there is usually so much destruction. It gets depressing, and what’s left often isn’t worth the trouble. (Or else the site is completely locked up and inaccessible.) But this one looks like it would have been pretty impressive even after decades of vandalism.

#22

Cliff Jennings said:

Reading between the lines, but from 3k miles away, I gather that the property owners (NV Bureau of Mines? Dept of Interior? ST of NV?) couldn’t /wouldn’t put up any effective fence around the area over the decades. So for almost a century, this has been a party site (per the testimonials). Hence, a wink at the trespassing. But, drunk teenagers and fried whomever kept falling through or off stuff, or worse; and the county had to foot the bill for emergency transport & etc. I think someone said to heck with that; and it was cheaper to tear it down than build an effective wall around the property.

Just guessing here…

Yep, that’s the usual scenario. Plus with a concrete structure, it starts getting to the point where more and more chunks are falling off. Meanwhile, personal responsibility has plummeted and government risk-aversion has soared.

#23

John Caughey said:

A couple of things conspired; the ore was lower grade making it labor intensive (labor is expensive) and the price of Silver was going down, so even producing more didn’t make more money and losses grew.

Bingo!

BTW, from some of the books I’ve read on the early days of mining in Nevada and the Mojave, I was somewhat surprised at the many ways that mines and mining concerns failed. Quite a few were brought down by legal costs, with lawsuits over claims, etc. dragging out for years and eating up all the profits.