More Vegas Day Trips.

VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
All of the following pictures were taken within an hours drive of the Las Vegas Strip.

This was inside a mine near the California/Nevada border. We were several hundred feet into the mountain and the miners followed the faultline at least another 100 feet down. It went much further than we could see before it curved out of sight below us.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
Within the same range of the previous mine, we came across this. It was well up and inside a mountain and many yards underground. They went through great efforts to get it in there. I'm not sure what type of motor it is, but it's still mounted to the vehicle frame. Just behind it was a compressor and pressure tank used to power their air tools. The air quality and noise must have been terrible. I can't imagine working in those conditions.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
I was able to locate a few pictures of a similar tractor, but little else of this Isaacson Tracdozer. It appeared to be in great shape without a single bullet hole. Without knowing anything of the tractor, it did appear to be fairly complete. I didn't see any obviously missing pieces.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
Another view within a nearby mine. This shaft went down about 200 feet before ending abruptly. Because of the dry conditions, the wood and shoring within a mine can appear to be solid and they most often are, but you should still consider them unsafe. We use redundant rope safety systems and even with the best of equipment we are not immune to accidents.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
I'm unfamiliar with these. If you visualize them upside-down, they would appear to be a funnel system, but I've never seen a dual funnel set-up. Much of the equipment used by miners was custom made to their needs. It's possible these are the only ones we'll ever see like it.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
This structure was near a mine. It was well ventilated with retrofit PVC pipe and appeared to have fire damage inside. It may have been a cabin or storage room that caught fire or possibly even a smoke house for food preservation.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
This was one of the oldest air compressor systems we've seen in the mountains. It's difficult to gauge size from the picture, but the motor on the left measured almost 4 feet long. The rivets used on the air tanks were around 2 inches wide. It's great that vandals haven't found it. It's a piece that I would expect to see in a museum.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
This mine was also in the same range as the mines above. It has one of the tallest headframes in the area. It stood about 100 feet tall and had 4 sets of stairs built into it. The purpose of the structure was to house a winch that pulled ore carts up rails mounted to the incline shaft.
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VegasUnderworld

Adventurer
Another view from within the same mine. When the miners found a large deposit profitable ore, they removed large pockets of it leaving areas resembling caverns called "stopes". This stope was mined further than our lights could penetrate. You can see part of the cart tracks they placed at the lowest level. As much effort as they put into this mine, we thought it was surely for gold, but it was primarily mined for tin. Today, the cost of tin is about $10 per pound. That's for refined tin. Way back then, it was worth pennies. It seems hardly worth the effort.
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