Skidoo Ghost Town Mine and Mill, Death Valley CA
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2022
- SKIDOO DEATH VALLEY CALIFORNIA
From its very beginning Skidoo displayed a definite tendency toward an organized and systematic development pattern that no doubt played a great part in helping sustain it through the rough years ahead. The rapid influx of mining men to the vicinity, some with families, made the establishment of a townsite and the disbursement of residential and business lots the next natural step in the area's growth. By the end of August 1906, a townsite was platted just east of the Skidoo Mine, which was functioning as the center of milling operations.
#travel, #deathvalley, #deathvalleynationalpark, #badwater, #skidoo, #california, #ballarat, #adventure, #ghosttowns, #exploration, #abandonedplaces, #southwest, #explore, #explorepage, #exploremore, #photography, #adventure
Resources:
Skidoo - by Alan h. Patera and David A. Wright
Internet Web sites.
Death Valley NP; Historic Resource Study
www.nps.gov/parkhistory/onlin...
Western Mining History
westernmininghistory.com
Library of Congress
www.loc.gov/pictures/
California State Library
archive.org/details/californi...
Nlce job!! Hope for more...
Thank you for the excellent presentation!
Glad you enjoyed it Iris
Great site, thank you 😊
Glad you like it!
👍
I very much enjoyed this video! I visited Skidoo in November 2020, it was late in the day and some of the snow started turning back into ice, it made for a slippery exploration. I agree, one of the most intact mills, thanks to it being within Death Valley, I suspect. If you climb up to the second level you don't need to take the unsafe wooden stairs and can see the backside of those large wheels, bull wheels i think you called them. I would love to go back soon for more exploration and photos. When you see those rusted cans, take a look to see do they have a seam on the side, do they have a pull tab, is the top and bottom soldered to the body of the can, all evidence of old cans. Brought back lovely memories, thank you!! One of the things I enjoy doing at such places is to think what it was like to live and work there the year round, and what courage/stamina it took to endure all that.
Thanks Delilah. Yes I agree it is so wonderful to imagine their lives at these once bustling towns
Check out the Mill in Atlantic City Wyoming. It's complete including the building. They give tours seasonally in the Summer
Thanks for the information. Should I get to Wyoming, I will check it out.
It just amazes me of the men that went out and found gold and other minerals out in such places with what they had in there time, Oh yea and getting all the materials to the sites. Really injoy your vids 👍
Yes I agree. Some of these places are remote today and we can reach them in the comfort of our vehicles. It amazing how the wandered around these harsh climates in search for gold or sliver
Yes this was a great episode.
Seeing the individual stamps at the stamp mill is a rarity.
The relative completeness of the components of the entire milling process was nice to see.
Great descriptions as always.
Thanks for taking me to another place where I had never been until now.
Steve, Glad you enjoyed this presentation. As always I get great pleasure during these expeditions.
@@GhostTownWonders I as you have always been an explorer.
My Norwegian father took me on so many adventures that it became a great part of our lives.
Of course I passed it on to my daughter and gave Stanley W. Paher’s Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps to her husband.
He had 4x4 and put it to use.
I don’t understand why more people have not seen your episodes. I know that you love what you are doing and so do we.
Maybe it’s because you are not as bodacious as Kim Kardashian!😂
Hoping to give you a laugh my friend.
@@stevesyverson8625 yes I am definitely not an influencer and am not bodacious. My father passed the passion for ghost towns to me. As kids he had us out all the time. Many places I can’t even return because I don’t know where they are. Thanks for the humor. I believe this subject has a very limited audience and therefore not many who review these are subscribers. I will continue non the less.
I really like your channel. It’s not big drama but factual and historical. Thank you for your research and travel.
Glad you liked it June. I enjoy making the videos. Glad you appreciate them
Thanks for another interesting Ghost Town video! I've been to Death Valley but never to Skidoo, will definitely have to visit there. now! Can't imagine how tough those workers had to be, boiling hot in summer and dang cold in winter, and the noise inside the mill plus all the toxic chemicals like mercury and arsenic. Glad the mill survived so well despite the town buildings pretty much disappearing.
Yes I would agree those miners were exposed to extremely unhealthy conditions and real hardships in the name of the gold, silver and ……..
I always wondered about the racket that came from those heavy stamps crushing the ore.
Also what hours that the miners worked and if they worked in shifts.
I have been to some large mines with many over 100 stamps and the workers dormitory only several hundred feet away.
Sleep could have been at a premium.
Fortunately mining operations are much more safe today.
The bullwheel had a belt on it from the engine and it turned the cam.
Even though there was not too much left of the townsite, it was still interesting thanks to your well researched commentary. I've only visited a death Valley once, and am amazed at the strength and stamina of the early miners who worked there.
Yes, these were hearty people that withstood true hardships.
I simply loved it. Really amazes me that there is any part of that old mill left. Amalgamation especially with plates could only recover up to around 70- 85% and that's on a very clean ore. Particle size mattered. Hence if it wasn't ground fine enough, capture rate could be significantly reduced. In other words the gold would have to be liberated from the ore completely to recover 85%. With the amount of water flow, rock flow would often "scrub" the tables of any mercury. The mill super always had to keep an eye on this. Then from there everything was piped down to the cyanide tanks where up to 98-99.8% of the remaining gold was extracted. Cyanide solution works in such away that it needed only a "whisper" of gold to dissolve all that was in the ore. Picture a little tiny speck of visible gold surrounded in most part by sand. The cyanide would dissolve all of the gold in that sand grain. They had what people call a stir paddles on the tanks, but they also would mix (by rotation) oxygen into the solution to speed up the reaction. The faster the paddles spun, the more oxygen. Very familiar with this whole set-up. Interesting that you mentioned a name of Del Lamar. I knew one such person in Carson city who owned a mill in Silver city. Great explore. Would love to see it myself someday but they pulled this old fellers drivers licence. Said i can't see. Know wonder i keep striking out with the woman folk. Yee-Haa! See ya on the next one.
Richard, thanks so much for the detail on the process. You have enlightened me, and it is appreciated. I have seen these stir paddles in the vats before and I did not know the purpose. As I understand the person watching the amalgamation process on the pans was among the highest paid at the mill due to the required expertise. He was known as the amalgamator.
@@GhostTownWonders Was also the one most trusted. Obviously. He could have high-graded anytime he wanted, and i imagine some even did.. So they'd pay him more for his honesty. There was a lot of loss of mercury back then due to the "scrubbing" effect of the sand on the plates. A YTer i know has a mine in NV that i used to have something to do with and the old-timer that i met and knew way back in the late '70's told me how they'd loose 2 lbs. of mercury per shift. Here's one a lot of people don't know about. It's called: "Dirty socks." The mill men would take an extra pair of socks to work, made sense to the mine super; i mean mills are notoriously wet and muddy. The mill hands would partly fill their socks with zinc shavings. Then they'd just hang the sock (s) in an out of sight place in the cyanide circuit usually below the thickener tank. The pregnant solution would precipitate the gold on the zinc in the sock and the mill hand would "change socks" at lunch and put the dirty socks in his lunch pail. An ounce or two a month was a lot back then. Well, even with the price dropping now, it still is. Points to ponder!
We had claimed 80 acres in skidoo when it had fallen out of national park hood in the late 70s the canyon that heads down to the floor of death Valley. We had a two room, cabin outhouse and various military vehicles down the canyon. We removed many of the vehicles. The 10 Wheel Dr. deuce and a half can still be seen in Tehachapi sitting next to a baseball park being used as a billboard holder. Down that same canyon, you’ll find a giant cable that stretches from one side of the canyon to the other, having ridden across it in the ore car, as a 13-year-old was quite an adventure. At least once a month, my parents would drag us all over Death Valley. The road was hidden and the cabin pushed over by the forest service. When they took us to court when they claimed us cleaning up all the old dump, trash and cars was not considered improvements Which were requirements to maintain the claim. They said they had to be done by a licensed contractor and took away our property.
Great story. Thanks for sharing. So even back then the Government was overreaching!!!!!
We went to skidoo
That is correct Rick. That was last time I went before this video
I truly enjoy your videos! Did Shorty ever strike it rich himself? Thank you for all the time and effort recording this in Death Valley!
Shorty never did make it big. They said he had a drinking problem and spent most of his money in the saloons. He was not disciplined enough to make good business decisions. He died in Big Pine, CA in the 1930s.
@@GhostTownWonders Thank you for letting me know! The man had a knack for geology!
23 skidoo
Great video...do you think there could still be gold there?
Oh and you said it's hot there, you're wearing a long sleeve shirt with a shirt underneath. 🤣😯
Daniel. Yes, it was very warm on the valley floor. This site is situated above 5,500' elevation. So comfortable as I was dressed.
Daniel, I suspect there is some gold at all of the former mines I visit. Mining laws are very restrictive, and it would take a team of lawyers to figure out how to extract any bit of gold.
I do not feel sorry for these old time miners with the heat. I fell sorry for the poor donkeys made to work under these conditions.