Tag: mining

Mt Baldy

one novelty of being back in southern California are the mountains. so accessible! within an hour you can be in the foothills or climbing one of the tallest peaks in the San Gabriel Mountains and hiking the highest peak in the San Bernardino Mountains even sooner! it’ll make for much more interesting trekking as we prepare for our next big hiking adventure.

last weekend we headed out for the summit of Mt. Baldy (or, officially, Mount San Antonio), the highest peak in Los Angeles county. it’s part of the Transverse Ranges that lie along the San Andreas Fault and was likely bestowed the name of Mount San Antonio in the 1840s by a rancher, after his patron saint. indigenous people in the area had other names for it, but today everyone calls it Mt. Baldy.

early entrepreneurs took advantage of the water resources of the canyons, building a sawmill (which burned down within a few years of construction and was never replaced) and starting an ice-hauling business. the steep walls of the canyon preserved snow on the northface slopes well into the spring. in the late 1850s, one-time mayor of Los Angeles, Damien Marchessault, and a partner built an ice house in the canyon (hence its current name) and started hauling ice down from Icehouse Canyon and selling it door-to-door. they also used it in their ice cream parlor in the city – the only one at the time.

it wasn’t until the late 1870s that prospectors tried their luck at gold mining around Mt. Baldy, without much success. water levels at the mines proved uncertain and people living downstream from the runoff filed suit over pollution of the creeks. more importantly, however, there wasn’t that much ore to be found and in relatively short order recreation overtook mining as a primary activity around Mt. Baldy.

the first successful summit of the mountain occurred via Lytle Creek in 1875 by a group of army surveyors and it wasn’t long before the adventurous took to climbing the mountain for recreation, generally via one of today’s common routes (Mt. Baldy Trail and the Devil’s Backbone – which we took). in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps improved and expanded the Devil’s Backbone Trail, to help stabilize and widen the trail, offering better protection from the occasionally precipitous drops on either side.

the first “resort” went up in 1880 and shortly thereafter the owner of one of the mining support stations (near what is now the village of Mt. Baldy) converted it into a rental resort; by the turn of the century, the latter entertained up to 100 guests per weekend (keeping in mind that at this time the canyon was not yet accessible by automobile). on enterprising mountain guide opened up a “resort” some 80 feet below the summit (really just a set of tents), but after damage from a cooking fire in 1913, it was abandoned.

the shift to recreational use of the canyon resulted in bitter disputes between the camp operators and the San Antonio Water Company, which controlled water rights for the area. the Water Company ultimately wrangled control of the road and closed it off to all comers for several years; eventually, however, they decided to profit from the interest in recreation and bought one of the remaining camps (and hiring the previous owner to run it) and reopened the road with tolls. Camp Baldy, as the Water Company renamed it, became a haven for tipplers during Prohibition, though it was subject to periodic raids (agents only found contraband on one occasion). Foster Curry, whose family was known for running the resorts at Yellowstone, came down to help run the resort with the assistance of a woman he met at Camp Baldy and who later became his wife. under their supervision, the resort grew to include cabins built along the creek, a pool (called “The Plunge), barber and beauty shop, post office, casino, dance pavilion, photography studio and a school.

in 1938, a flood swept through San Antonio and Icehouse Canyons, destroying nearly all of the existing structures, including most of Camp Baldy. the Forest Service (which took over land and leases when the area became a a national forest in 1908) did not permit new structures in Icehouse Canyon, but much of Camp Baldy returned as Mt. Baldy Village, which now includes stores, lodges, fire department, school, and Forest Service information center. the Sierra Club built a lodge near Manker Flats (open to club members) and a ski hut on the Mt. Baldy Trail, near the headwaters of San Antonio Creek and named for the first female president of the Sierra Club (Aurelia Harwood, for whom a peak on the Devil’s Backbone Trail is also named). today, in addition to the numerous hikers in all types of weather, there is also the Mt. Baldy Ski Lifts (which operates the closest ski slopes to Los Angeles, and which runs the lift we rode to get to Baldy Notch on summer weekends). as long as the haze isn’t bad, you can see all the way to Catalina from the top of the peak!

we could only see cities to the north of the mountains; above the haze we could see to the horizon … just nothing on the ground.

Grandview Hotel

on our way back from the Tusayan ruins (about which more to come), I took driver’s prerogative and stopped at several vistas to snap pictures and admire the Canyon. one of those locations was the site of the former Grandview Hotel, one of the first lodging options for tourists at the Grand Canyon.

in 1886, a rancher named John Hance opened his land up to visitors. thought to be one of the first non-Native American residents of the Grand Canyon area, after failing as an asbestos miner, Hance developed trails and took groups of visitors down into the Canyon. he sold his ranch to a couple of miners working around the point in 1895 to focus on guiding and serving as postmaster. he died the year the site became a National Park and was the first man buried in the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery.

while successfully extracting copper, gold and silver, from claims just below Grandview Point, miners Ralph Cameron and Pete Berry improved the hiking trail into the Canyon by partially following an existing Native American path and employing mules to transport goods and people along the route. Cameron and Berry capitalized on the growth in tourism, developing services for visitors including a lodging at both Grandview Point and farther along the rim near what is now the Bright Angel Trailhead.

between 1892 and 1897, Berry and his wife, Martha, put his share of the mine profits into a rambling, rustic lodge they named the Grandview Hotel. they aimed for an “authentic” Southwest quality, using Ponderosa pine for construction and featuring Native American crafts throughout the lodge. when the Santa Fe Railroad completed a line to Williams in 1901, the Berrys offered free stage transportation to their hotel to encourage visitors. they sold the Grandview property the following year, however, to a mining company from Chicago and set up a new hotel on their homestead property nearby.

competition heated up in 1905 when the Santa Fe Railroad built the extravagant El Tovar Hotel across from their new depot (and which still stands today at the heart of Grand Canyon Village). the Berrys struggled, eventually dividing and selling their property in an effort to foster a community to rival the growing Grand Canyon Village. the venture failed but when Santa Fe offered to buy their property, the Berrys refused, opting instead to sell to William Randolph Hearst in 1913 pleased with the idea that a wealthy man had thwarted the corporation that put them out of business. Hearst closed the hotels, however, maintaining the properties as a family retreat in the short term; the Berrys served as caretakers for the property until their retirement in 1919. when Martha and Pete died, in 1931 and 1932 respectively, they were buried in the Grand Canyon cemetery along with John Hance.

despite leaving the Grandview and Berry properties as family retreats, Hearst did harbor aspirations of developing a grand tourist resort on the land, which the budding National Parks Service, which assumed supervision of the Park in 1919, found troubling (I wonder how much the railroad lobby had to do with that …). the Parks Service successfully concentrated tourist services management under the aegis of a single concessionaire — the company responsible for the Santa Fe-owned hotels. after this, while Hearst retained ownership of his property, he let the buildings fall into disrepair before finally dismantling the Grandview and selling some of the beams. in 1941, the Parks Service gained control of the Hearst property through condemnation; he did not take lightly to this challenge and waged a typically searing (though ultimately unsuccessful) campaign against the government in the press. the Parks Service finally dismantled the Summit Hotel in 1959, though some of the mining structures left from the Hearst property remain as historical artifacts on Horseshoe Mesa.

the Argo Gold Mine

walking down the hill

after we learned about the tunnel from our new Dutch friend, we got to go up the mountain and into an abandoned mine — the Double Eagle Mine, which dates from the early 1890s. they made us put on hardhats and, upon letting us out of the shuttle, admonished us to walk down the hill. apparently, a couple of weeks earlier a couple from somewhere in Europe made the mistake of turning left out of the tunnel and ended up half way to Central City (which we know is about 4.5 miles away).

when these mines were prospected, men had to rely on candlelight and hand tools, with the occasional assistance of dynamite (which, as we know, got them into trouble in the Argo Tunnel). it was excruciating and exhausting work to dig and haul rock from the tunnels and the depth of the Double Eagle mine illustrated this. it’s only a couple dozen meters from the mouth of the tunnel to the end, though it’s high enough in most places for someone of my height to walk through (we still had to put on hard hats all the same).

while the Double Eagle mine didn’t net the miners the lode every prospector hopes for, it yielded some gold. in fact, there is still gold to be found in the tunnel. because they were using candles to light the tunnel, the original prospectors didn’t notice the vein of gold running along the ceiling at the back of the tunnel. it’s hard to tell from the picture of Gabrielle and Jen, but there’s an apparent streak along the southern wall of the tunnel which would have been just a bit too faint to distinguish by candlelight. we, of course, had the benefit of electricity. and being told where to look to see the gold. you can’t prospect on the Argo land any more, but there is still gold in dem hills and anyone can take a pan out to the creek and try their hand at prospecting in the frigid waters. we opted for the easy, gold-flake-laden prospecting opportunity in the troughs in front of the Argo shop. the water was plenty cold, but at least we weren’t up to our knees in it!

the Argo Tunnel

in addition to the Denver Miniature Museum, we also ventured into the mountains to see another unique Colorado site — a gold mine & mill. the Argo Mill & Mine is located in Idaho Springs east of Denver and is known in part because of its 4.16 mile long tunnel that allowed easier extraction of gold along the length of the tunnel. the Dutch ex-pat that started us off on our tour was a hoot and gave us far more information than strictly necessary.

construction of the tunnel began in 1893 from the southern terminus and, by the time it reached its completed length in 1910, intersected nearly all the major gold mines between the entrance and Central City. construction did not progress unhindered, as management and construction teams changed and war broke out between England and Spain. rather than dig further into the mountain and then cart gold out to the entrance and down the mountainside or to the mill, the tunnel allowed prospectors to send ore down chutes into carts that traveled along rails inside the tunnel and straight to the mill.

by 1914 the nearby mill was running at full capacity but problems persisted and, in 1943, disaster struck. prospectors found a major lode of gold near the Central City end of the tunnel and decided to blast it out to get at it more quickly. unfortunately, there was an abandoned mine that did not appear on maps which was filled with water. the blast unleashed what amounted to an underground lake and flooded out the tunnel. the deluge ripped up everything in the tunnels, rendering it virtually unusable and full of acidic mine water. shortly after the disaster, the national government ordered all gold mines closed so as to free men and materials for mining metals more deemed more important to the war effort. neither the mine nor the tunnel ever re-opened.

Argo Mill & Tunnel
Argo Tunnel