Hello from southern BC

Welcome,
Nice pics of the mine, is it an old site you found your working or one you have been working for awhile? have you made any finds ? Looks like someone did a lot of blasting to get through that rock.

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Thanks for your welcome and thanks for your interest !
This particular mine was one of the finds that make the hike up the mountains really worthwhile. The claim was called the "Lou Dillon" - probably named after a famous race horse of the 1890s. I spotted a reference to the claim on an old map, then cross-referenced it to a modern topo map and got an approximation of it's location - crisscrossed the mountain side and there it was. The steel bars behind the anvil in the picture were the "drill steels" used to bore holes in the rock to load with black powder and blast. One man with a sledge hammer (single jacking) or two men with two sledge hammers (double jacking) using progressively longer 'steels'. The shaft goes straight  in 250 ft, then left for 30 ft and right for 350 ft.: an awful lot of work for little return.

This mine was last worked in the 30s and only made one small shipment of ore. The anvil & other artifacts in the picture were dug up within 10 feet of where they are shown - near the portal. There was another portal in the area (on the same claim) which had caved in. Finding an intact adit or portal is very rare in this country and you have to exercise a lot of caution before entering them - bad air, loose rock, winzes (vertical shafts) etc..

I have been back four times and cannot locate a cabin site - no domestic garbage - no old tins, no old bottles, no shards - nothing. Only one tin plate found at the portal. I think that the artifacts we did find were partially buried in the expectation that the miner would be coming back and then re-buried by the seasons. It is in a remote location and only accessible by pack trail.

I have located my pic of the biggest and best find at the claim and have attached it below. It took three of us several hours to get it down the hill to where we had slashed in an ATV trail. It's a Truax Ore Car ca. 1898.
Cheers

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I think I need one of you fellows from down south of the 'Medicine Line' to bring up one of your super metal detectors and we'll go find the cabin site !

Cheers

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,35691.msg217711.html#msg217711

to our forum and thanks a lot for those great pictures! Sounds like a very interesting project! Please keep us posted!

Best wishes,

Christian

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,35691.msg217732.html#msg217732

Welcome to the forum from the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon!       Great pictures!  Reminds me of a lot of the things you coulld find around my area back in the '70's and early 80's.  Most of it gone now!                 

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ArfieBoy