Permission to document the area was granted to me by the late owner of the property, which is mothballed and still has on site security with three caretakers who live on site as well. If you do know the place, just know there’s a lot of cameras around the property and it all goes to the caretaker in charge of security that is viewed from a central office. It is private property and trespassing / stealing alike is a crime.
Nice! So clean! What’s the story here? What did it mine? I assume it got depleted or uneconomical to keep running it? Approximate location?
I don’t give out too much info but it was at one point a wartime critical minerals mine. It was a major producer of tungsten, molybdenite, and less so copper. It continued to be integral to the Cold War until China destroyed the markets sometime in the 80s and further more in the 90s.
Is this the Climax Mine? Might be too much info.
No, climax is still going as far as I know, almost went to work there until I found out how bad the company was boning their guys on pay.
There's a whole book about this mine called Mine in the Sky by Joseph Kurtak. It's out of print currently but there are copies available. The majority of what you see around those buildings was actually processing for the scheelite ore that came from several surrounding mines. There were cables and buckets coming into that facility to be processed both from the Morgan pass side to the north and also from some adits on Mt. Tom to the south (including the tungstar mine, once owned by Shirley Temple as part of her father's poor management of her money). There was an entire mining village way up in the mountains to the north of here known as Okieville due to a large number of residents from Oklahoma, all that remains of it is a large, flat sandy area and one very small delapidated log-cabin like structure. The most impressive feat done here IMO was the Adamson mine adit just to the south of Broken Finger Peak, it's just shy or 13,000 feet elevation. If you have ever hiked up here you know that 13,000 ft elevation can be difficult to walk around in, much less do hard manual labor in a mine.
After several issues with profitability through the years, the mine was tapped out around the mid 1970s and after several exploration efforts through the 80s, china came in and collapsed the tungsten market. The mine closed in 1982, and the mill closed October 1983. Through the 80s there were efforts to open it as a profitable mine but they were ultimately unsuccessful.
Most recently ~2015, they have been trying to turn the mine into a hydroelectric generation project by plugging a shaft and allowing the groundwater already running into the mine to collect in the tunnels to run through a turbine. This is a pretty neat usage of existing facilities without making a dam or disturbing any waterway flows. Construction has never started. The last I saw of this project they had filed to surrender their permit for the project in 2023 but that application to surrender was withdrawn a few months later, meaning it looked like they were going to give up on it then decided maybe they wouldn't give up.
About 10 years ago the old mine road to morgan pass was a relatively easy way to get up to see the higher mine operations, but is apparently washed out and impassible now, with access only being south from mosquito flat.
Yeah it’s not going to happen, there’s just not enough flow to be worth large scale investment. That said, the mine site is powered by a small hydro electric generator station and it’s pretty bad ass to see.
I had always wished to go see some of that operation up close. I'm supremely jealous.
Some nice-looking vehicles there. Hope they get put back into use or sold.
Working on getting the diesel locomotives new fuel pumps and filters, they’ll probably still be useful when we inevitably need American produced tungsten seeing as Chinas clearly drawing a line in the sand with western countries.
More cool mining photos! 👍
A lot of great history.
https://www.mtnmouse.com/california/sng11_pine_creek_mine_story_blog.html
Thanks for posting that, lots of interesting info.
That dump truck is clearly a Constructicon.
It’s damn cool, they used to pit the top of the mountain until it started killing too many people with cave ins and rock falls and of course winters would shut it down for a good portion of the year. This and the shovels are the only remnants of that era.
That fire truck is awesome.
Probably my favorite part, there was o2 canisters that went to the old school MSA vision masks, never did spend the time to look for those but I know they’re there somewhere.
Radon cards?
Radioactive gas released by Uranium decay. It’s common in mines that were in granite. Uranium is minor amounts is in Granite. The cards were likely dosimeter readings for guys on various levels.
That’s a nice shot of the air compressor! I occasionally still run into some of those in operation, but gosh, they’re noisy!
I figured they would be, I think that’s the compressor for just one level too.
I’d also like to add the gate for the only route in has a camera system, we watched some hikers get trespassed on our visit with the sheriffs department responding.
Wow. That's some excitement!
Wow! The union carbide fire engine is COOL.
My favorite part.
Do you... have any more pictures of it?
Yeah I did a full inside and out walk around it pretty much everything.
Beautiful stuff! It calls to mind a Minus the Bear song "Houston, we have uh-oh", which despite its stupid title, has some really great lyrics about our relationship to the past:
People used to work here
And mined their lives from this ground
Crushed them in these machines
And forged them in the future
We just take pictures
Of hearts that stopped beating
What I like is that your pictures and the story behind them are almost a rebuttal to the cynicism of the song. You're not just taking pictures; you're documenting the past, reverentially. That's one of things I like about this sub in general, and your post really put a button on it.
Geez, that place looks scary to me!
The interior of the mine is unsettling in both size and darkness. Everything is huge and no matter how much light we used the darkness filled all of our photos and video. It certainly made recording a challenge.
Image Ten suggests the mine was closed in 1990, as visible on the handwritten notes visible on the desk. Image 16 appears to show a child’s doll dangling from a support cable but in zoomed examination is simply exuberant corrosion.
What are little “balls” in the barrels? Also, the firetruck is super cool appears to be from the ‘40’s!
For the ball mills that pulverized crushed ore!
Is it just me or does these objects look staged to cover for something else?
It’s not I assure you lol, plenty of men and women have worked here. It was just a mine. But it is eerie to see things left like they are, the shut down was rather immediate, simply told people they were done and not to come back type of deal.
it's just you
Ok. I thought so.
I kinda get that impression too even if I don't believe that it's true
Just has an odd look about it