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(continued from last week)
 returned to the mine entrance with my tripod and flashlights. I carefully lowered everything down into the hole then carefully placed my feet into it. I lay on my stomach and crawled backwards into the opening. It was about a 45 degree slope of loose gravel and sand from the hole.
I was now facing the doorway which I had been able to see from outside. There were some markings in orange spray paint, and the doorway obviously led to a mining passageway.
I ducked inside the doorway. The passage was about 5 feet in height, making it necessary for me to stoop as I moved through it.
( Read more... )
x-posted to abandonedplaces and rural_ruin | |
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(continued from yesterday)
 he Coolest Thing I've Ever Done, was down a dusty old mining road just outside the remote semi-ghost town of Austin, Nevada. I had no idea what was in-store for me when I began my expedition to get a closer look at Stokes Castle two years ago, until I began following the dirt road beyond the tower further into the hills. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the considerable risk I was taking to continue down the road. Large, commercial trucks aren't really designed for traveling in all-terrain environments devoid of asphalt. Without a trailer, there's no weight on the drive axles, yielding very little traction. Additionally, the road was narrow with lots of low branches hanging over the road and tight switch-backs as it wound up the mountain.
I began to see additional remnants of the area's mining history. The first impressive thing I found lay about a mile into the hills from Stokes Castle. It was an old stone structure, it's door sealed shut with an iron gate. The rear wall had collapsed taking a good portion of the roof with it.
I stopped the truck and went to inspect. With the collapsed wall, the barrier on the door had been rendered useless, as anyone could easily access the interior. When I first visited it two years ago, I did go inside, but it was rather uninteresting so I didn't bother with it for this reunion with the structure. There were plenty of other interesting things here to get excited about.
( Read more... )x-posted to abandonedplaces and rural_ruin | |
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his should've been written two years ago.
In September of 2004, a lot of neat things happened. Unfortunately, one really bad thing happened as well. The PC I carried around with me on the truck back then decided to die on me. I often refer to this as The Great Soopageek Blackout; I only wrote one LiveJournal entry between 8/31 and 10/21 of that year. (Interestingly enough, on the date of my old wedding anniversary, but I make no mention of it). I had only been back on the road for a couple of months, after being laid-up for 11 weeks with a broken leg. While laying around, I began a correspondence with (and had a bit of a crush on)a young lady from San Diego as a result of my Beastie Boys lyrics site. We colluded to attend a Beastie Boys concert together in San Diego later in September, and so began a month long excursion to and from the west coast soon after returning to work, that ultimately ended with me becoming a trainer in October.
On the return trip from San Deigo, I had an opportunity to do something that I consider to be The Coolest Thing I've Ever Done. I never wrote about it though, in fact, I've maybe told only 3-4 people about it. It was partially due to the lack of computer resources at the time, but the main reason I didn't write about it was because of the photographs. This was a couple of months before I bought the type of camera I have now. Back then, I had this really cheap, disgusting digital camera. If you followed the "young lady" link above, you know exactly what I mean. I took pictures of The Coolest Thing I've Ever Done and they were all blurry and awful. In frustration and anger, I deleted them. I vowed that, given the opportunity, I would one day re-live the The Coolest Thing I've Ever Done and properly capture it with photos. In retrospect, it was this very event that made me realize that I needed to invest in a much better camera for documenting my experiences on the road.
But this story goes back even further, to February 2004, several months before I broke my leg. It was my first trip across U.S. 50 through central Nevada. It's a 400+ mile stretch of two-lane highway that has become my favorite drive in the country. The western half of that drive in particular captures my imagination for many reasons, and after last week, I made a decision to purposefully take several weekends off there over the next year for further exploration. It's the location of the Nevada Shoe Tree, for one, which I've been known to blather-on about endlessly. But the whole thing which started my fascination with the area was on that first trip, when I decided to visit the semi-ghost town of Austin. I'm not going to regurgitate that experience here now, you can go and read the original entry if you like, but I would like to draw attention to something at the end of that entry which is where this one begins.
While standing beside my truck, parked in a pull-off on the edge of Highway 50, I took a final photograph, before leaving Austin, of a lone structure sitting on a hill. The silhouette of that building intrigued me, and is what would draw me back to Austin seven months later on my way back from San Diego.
I remember it was still very hot in the Nevada desert that September. Just an hour or so before arriving in Austin, I had stopped at Sand Mountain and very foolishly had decided to take off my shoes and walk a considerable distance across its scorching sands. A combination of the heat and friction had exfoliated the bottoms of my feet, and they were smooth and sore. There's a decrepit cemetery which sits on both sides of the highway on the west end of town, just before it twists up and into Pony Canyon toward the Austin Summit. There's a large dirt pull-out here, where I decided to drop the trailer and discern a way up to the stark building on the hill above. I had a pretty good idea, though.
I drove the tractor into town, the mysterious building disappearing from sight on my right as it became obscured by the forested walls of mountain pass. Just before the quaint, main street of town began, there was a small dirt road winding up into the hills. I geared-down and flipped the switch to engage the inter-axle differential on the truck, essentially giving me 8-wheel drive as I began the dusty ascent. The road traversed the edge of the hill, overlooking a ravine and the main highway below. The road turned sharply to the left and continued ascending, reaching a wide plateau overlooking the valley, with only the object of my search sitting at the edge of it.
( Read more... )x-posted to abandonedplaces and rural_ruin | |
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 y all accounts, 2005 will go down as one of the more memorable I've had in some time. You know how, as you get older, the time-lines of events and years begin to mesh together to the point that they become indistinguishable? It's not likely this will happen with 2005 for me. It was such a great year in so many ways. I fell in love and I began to get a hold on my financial situation. I forged many new friendships, renewed old ones, and strengthened the bonds of current friendships. My favorite band, who made my favorite song on my favorite album, reunited after a 13 year hiatus and I was afforded the opportunity to see them play live five times in four weeks. And of course, there were numerous adventures.
This isn't to say that it hasn't had its down sides. I had my camera stolen along with video footage of the afore mentioned concert. I had a couple of tickets. My cat became extemely ill costing me nearly a grand in vet bills (I never wrote about that). For all intents and purposes I lost a friendship that meant a great deal to me, or at the very least will likely never be the same again. But all in all, it was a remarkably positive year. One filled with lots and lots of pictures; over 3,000 in fact. Last year I was content to split the year into two halves, but this year I think I'm going to work in quarters. So without further ado:
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In the three years that I've been travelling the U.S. in a futile attempt to cure my insatiable wanderlust, I've taken several opportunities to explore western ghost towns. In the past, however, I've always sought them out purposely. While travelling U.S. 89 in central Utah earlier this week, I encountered one quite by chance; one with an interesting and infamous history. Thistle served as a junction for many things in the course of history. Geographically, Thistle Creek and Soldier Creek converge to form the Spanish Fork River, creating a natural river valley around the western side of Solider Summit. In the late 19th century, the town of Thistle sprung to life with the junction of two lines of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad, boasting as many as 600 residents in the early 20th century.  With the introduction of the automobile and the decline of rail service, the town's population dwindled throughout the rest of the century to a population of around 50. Thistle served as a primary junction of two major U.S. Highways - U.S. 6 and U.S. 89. At one time, U.S. 50 also ran through here before being re-routed a couple hundred miles to the south. In the spring of 1983, at the onset of the '82-84 El Nino, a major landslide broke loose from the side of Soldier Summit, burying the town and obliterating the railroad and highways. The resulting natural dam created what is now Thistle Lake and necessitated the re-routing and the railroad through Soldier Summit in tunnels and the highways through a new pass on the eastern side of the mountain. The following satellite photo gives a top-down view of the area. The area just south of "THISTLE" is where the waterways, highways, and railways all met prior to the landslide. 
Scroll around the area yourself at GoogleThe landslide was devastating. It was the first presidential declaration of natural disaster for the state of Utah. While it was slow and deliberate, resulting in no loss of human life, it was costly. To this day, it remains the most costly landslide in U.S. history, totalling nearly 400 million dollars in damage, reconstruction, and lost revenue. Adjusted for inflation, that would be a modern-day price tag of $764 million. 
 Of course, I didn't know all of this prior to taking the following photos. I just saw some cool, old buildings by the side of U.S. 89 as I was on my way to Mt. Pleasant, UT. I made my delivery and on the return trip, decided to do some exploring armed with my trusty camera. ( My exploration of a flooded house in Thistle - 40 photos ) | |
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