The city has taken steps to prevent the curious and the desperate from going into the elevators, including piling rocks against the doors and windows.
history under ground
rocks
Core samples archived under the laboratories.
A tram that once linked the Sunnyside Mine to the mill in Eureka has been reduced to a single cable. Nearby, an open adit drips water into a tributary of the Animas River.
Taconite Harbor’s main road, now overgrown and leading to nothing. Just asphalt between caved-in curbs.
Taken from under the headframe.
Sidewalks to a boarded barracks, each making the other obsolete in the night.
The tailings boom is the first and last thing you see when approaching the mountaintop shipwreck.
In the mountainside are a number of air shafts, indicating where the tunnels traced under the rocky surface.
Freezing groundwater in the drain has created this ice wall in Buckingham Creek Drain, which is nearly all blasted natural stone. Lit with several LED panels. It was a cold night.
Between the ice chute and the back of the north section of the cellars, a little pillar shows where a room used to be. The ceiling’s disintegration has since filled the space, which seems to be the last point of expansion in the cave–this was last carved in the mid-1840s.
A tunnel connecting the two larger caves in the hill; those that Jacob vented in the rear. The vents are still extant!
The last tailings on a broken conveyor belt.
A typical summer storm on Lake Superior.
Bricks from the demolished buildings.
300 tea lights illuminate what Greg Brick calls the Rotunda, under the brew house proper, which was part of Christopher Stahlmann’s natural cave.
Looking across the whole milling operation from its dedicated powerhouse stretching across Eagle River.
The people that stayed here carved bowls from the mesa itself to collect water.
After climbing the elevator shaft to the illusive second level, a new pallet of colors were revealed.
Like a railgun pointed at the Rockies… the boom would direct tailings–junk rock–outside of the dredge pond.
Some of the workings inside the ruins of the Gold Prince Mill are still obvious, such as this steel ore chute over that used to feed a floatation tank.
Check that waterfall!
The dredge is divided into four levels. The top level has controls for the tailings boom and, when it was there, the bucket excavator.
An abandoned ranch on the east side of the tracks. This was not the Colmor Cutoff they were waiting for.
The ruins of the the Hubert Mine over the ruins of Nevadaville. Its ore was taken through the town to a mill below it.
Although the caves deviated little in their year-round temperature, it was common to use blocks of ice to cool beer immediately before shipment. This is the ruins of the ice chute.
Will coming down “Darwin’s Ladder”.
Modern ruins of the Gilman-Belden tram…
The west portal of the tunnel is open, and if it wasn’t for the rough track, I would think by looking at it that a train could be coasting up behind me any moment. Mamiya 6/Portra 160
Looking into the mouth of the hopper which mine carts dumped into at the top of the Concentrator.
Chester Creek Infall, near Duluth’s old Armory. The creek will not emerge again until it is near the Lakewalk.
Taken in a closet in the middle of the demolished coke ovens. No doubt, these charts were for equipment in the ovens.
A rusting disconnect gangway. The smokestack is for a boiler, if I recall.
The right portal used to go straight into the basement of the hotel, judging from the ruins.
The rumors were true. Success is sweet.
Bricks from the demolished buildings.
Below Grand Army Mine is Gold Collar. A ‘collar’ is the braced section around the portal of a mine shaft.
Bricks from the demolished buildings.