August 31, 2013 Empire Mine State Park, Grass Valley, Nevada

Toured the Empire Mine State Park today, and it was fascinating.  It was a huge operation and the mine was vast.  We could have spend days touring this place, but alas we got a late start and it was too hot....

Beautiful old building, huh!
This is the front - the back of this building is all dusty and dirty and faces the mining operation.
The mine closed in 1957 and it appears that they just walked away.
The mine is now filled with water within 150 ft. of the surface.
One of the offices - the round object is a safe.
There were lots of safes, big and small.  Remember, this was gold being mined!
The Secret Room contained a scale model of the entire mine, made out of colored wires.



This is the cable tram that brought out the ore, and also took the miners down and up.

This doesn't show the angle of descent, but it was steep and very dark! 
The miners rode a manskip going in and out of the mine.
As part of the "experience" this thing shook as the lights went out.  Yeow!

These things must have made a huge noise....!

1 comment: