Colorful Miner Shows Off Working Underground Placer Gold Mine

I thought I’d follow my recent exploring video of an abandoned underground placer gold mine with a visit to a working underground placer gold mine as the stark contrast between the two should be immediately apparent… John, the owner of the mine you see in this video, runs a profitable and very professional mining operation. You’ll undoubtedly notice how clean and organized the mine is when compared to the absolute disasters that many abandoned underground placer gold mines we visit are (the recent video I’m referring to, of course, is this one: bit.ly/38SO5iG).
This mine does have some advantages over other placer mines we’ve visited in that the material surrounding the placer deposits was like concrete in most sections. This is why only a small part of the mine needed timber supports. Furthermore, this mine is also not riddled with numerous faults. Faults can be a source of rich ore, but they can also be sources of great instability inside of a mine.
Even with these advantages, working with placer material underground can be difficult. That makes it all the more impressive to me how modern machinery and modern mining techniques (as well as John’s hard work) have allowed him to develop and operate this mine by himself. Doing this much work in the past would have required a large crew!
The first activity at this site that John is aware of dates back to the 1860s or 1870s when an adit was run into the mountain here. However, that adit seems to run too high and was run at a somewhat awkward angle in relation to where the channel and the gold are. If one looks across the portal where we entered from the workshop, it is still possible to see that old adit. John, of course, has run his adit in a good ten feet or so lower than this original adit and so it is difficult to see from where we entered.
I found John to be a fascinating character and was grateful that he invited us in to show off his mine. Fortunately, I had enough sense to shut up and just let him speak as he was taking us around! Unfortunately, though, as I’ll explain below, I had to remove some of John’s cutting wit, wisdom and color from the video...
The video started off rather choppily because I hacked off the first part of it where I showed all of the mining equipment outside. John requested that the location be kept discreet and upon reviewing the video, there were just too many distinctive landmarks visible in the footage shot on the outside.
I’m still receiving comments from viewers that simply can’t get their minds around the existence of ancient river channels and continue to believe that the river gravel is only from pyroclastic flows, from modern rivers (despite these deposits often being on the top of ridges or mountains) or simply are not possible. These viewers - some of them experienced miners - are failing to understand that just because geological conditions are a certain way in the areas that they are familiar with, does not mean that there are not different circumstances and conditions in other places. Hopefully, John’s detailed explanations in this video will finally put that to rest!
And for those of you that have no idea what all of this is about, ancient rivers used to run through this area that collected large amounts of gold over time. The movement of tectonic plates, violent geological activity and time conspired to bury these ancient river channels. Occasionally, the remains of these ancient river channels are exposed on the surface, but, often, miners must tunnel through large sections of rock to unlock the gold from these ancient river channels of countless millions of years ago.
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so I’d encourage you to adjust your settings to the highest quality if it is not done automatically.
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD
As well as a small gear update here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
Thanks for watching!
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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them - nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.
These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever.
I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
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