Teaching has been very tough, and even more draining emotionally and mentally. I finally had a three day weekend to recuperate. I awoke at 7:30 a.m. to my phone ringing. It was Pete, the math teacher in Norwood, calling to see if I wanted to go for a hike. So, I said "heck yeah man!" and off we went. We were heading to a series of really old Mines over by Paradox, which is by the Utah border. When we arrived near where the trailhead was Pete decided to cut off a mile of hiking by basically bouldering our way to the trail, about 200 feet below.
We clambered our way down to the trail, and began walking down the canyon. The canyon walls were full of cool holes, caves, and various formations.
We arrived at the first Mine, which was pretty obviously marked from the trail. The debris trail from the Mine was obvious, and we hiked up to it to check it out. We both are more than 6 feet tall, and we were both able to stand up inside the mine. It went a lot farther back than we ventured.
The second mine we encountered was very obvious. It was much bigger, definitely ran a bigger operation, but looked pretty unstable so we didn't go in. We began seeing obvious copper signs in the rock here.
Further on we found one more mine that was really big, very impressive, but also very unstable. We walked up to it but didn't go in. There was another mine right next to it, and it had some of the most impressive signs of Copper I've ever seen.
Beyond that we came upon the workman's living quarter. It consisted of about 6 cabins in varying condition. Some looked like they hadn't been inhabited since the 1800's, while another had insulation dated to the 1980's. It was very interesting.
Beyond the buildings we came upon what we thought was the granddaddy of the mines. The entrance was just mammoth, carved out of the rock. It had a door, and we could easily stand inside it. I was very uneasy, because the mine was definitely carved under a rock overhang, and looked pretty unstable.
As we started walking past the big mine Pete said, "well there's the mill!". I said, "what mill"? He said "what mill? Seriously?". And then there it was. And it was absolutely Mammoth.
The mill used to process copper and silver, and I was surprised to see that such a big structure was still standing, especially since it was built back in the 1890's.
We walked through it, which I won't ever do again, and came out the other side where we saw three more mines.
The lower mine is just in front of Pete, and the upper mine is directly above Pete. We checked out the lower mine first.
That mine we really impressive. It had a railroad track going into it, and, as you can see, the rock was so Copper rich they looked blue.
The upper mine wasn't as cool as the lower mine, but still was impressive. All of the mines out here were just massive, and after researching the mine when I got back home I learned that it was a really big Copper and Silver Mine during the late 1800's and throughout the 1900's. It was a splendid hike, and a great way to spend a day off.
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