6 ms·

Abandoned mines cover the West

57 points by bikenaga 2y ago

problemsolver77 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
throwup238 2y ago
To add insult to injury, the vast majority of these mines have been closed off to the public in the last 20 years for liability reasons, even the ones that don’t generate significant amounts of latent pollution. Obviously most people don’t want to be around a defunct uranium mine but the same policies have closed off all other mines. You used to be able to roll up on a mine tailing pile or even go into the mine to look for mineral specimens. Even though the mines are no longer economically viable, they were a gold mine for rock hounds and educators looking for interesting rocks. Now all of that is gone and all we have left is bullshit commercial operators that make fake tailing mixed with commercially sourced gems.
- skipkey 2y ago
  There are still quite a few accessible mines on public lands in Arizona. Well, generally the mine shafts themselves are off limits for safety reasons, but you can usually get to the tailings piles. In the last couple of years I have pulled nice specimens of chrysocolla, fluorite, onyx from tailings.
- bhhaskin 2y ago
  It is a very good thing abandoned mines are closed. They are deadly and you should never go into one.
  - defrost 2y ago
    As someone who is over 60 and who has been going into abandoned mines for 40 years can I ask why? What's next, no more bungy jumping, free climbing, surfing The Right, sinkhole diving, mustering cattle, etc?
    - notheyarent 2y ago
      Yes. Those are all extremely dangerous activities and our public hospitals should not be carrying the burden
      - throwup238 2y ago
        I don’t think you understand what “mustering cattle” means...
        defrost 2y ago
        Growing up in the Kimberley it was all Bull Buggies, Broomstick choppers, Quarter Horses and dirt bikes, all intrinsically a wee bit risky - but good practice for "grown up" geophys surveying in custom STOL crop dusters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B-zWxDJOZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B-zWxDJOZU
        082349872349872 2y ago
        3:54 B taurus indicus begs to differ! (no oysters on the menu plz?) The guy who taught me to swing a Brunton was over four times my age, and whenever we were hiking in to a site he led us in: this basically meant we young vegetables would be frantically scrambling up to a nearby ridge so we could spot where he'd got to, only to eventually notice him waving cheerfully at us from the next ridge line over.
        defrost 2y ago
        Buuuut they roast up so fine :( 'Wee bit risky" is right, keep your head on a swivel and don't be on the quad bike when the irate bull flips it and all is okay. Your leading surveyor was very much our father when we were in single digits .. four hour long walks across rugged landscapes and down gorges with him as a barely visible dot waaaay up ahead. He's a lot slower now approaching 90 .. but can still split wood and shovel a tonne or two.
jeffbee 2y ago
It surprised me when I moved west how recent some of these are, and that they are not all out in the middle of nowhere. There's a gold mine in Napa County that was developed in the 1980s, well after CEQA was enacted. The guy who owns it took out a billion dollars worth of gold and left a big hole where all the acid is impounded behind a dam, in the middle of the Cache Creek watershed. I visit that region frequently and I always wonder why we thought we had to do every last gold mine.
- abakker 2y ago
  same reason we monetize every click, fund every ad tech, and track every data point. People feel the need to exploit resources in order to get rich. A billion dollars in actual gold is pretty real. Look at superfund sites like Captain Jack mine in Boulder. significant un-managed harm and not that much commercial output.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    If only we could get back to lifestyle devoid of using any resources...
    - defrost 2y ago
      The middle ground is have states bake minesite remediation costs into the permissions contracts of mining leases and to enforce such obligations upon those who profit so as to not allow "bankruptcy" defaults by shell companies. This will increase resource costs, put downwards pressure on consumption, etc but we'll still function as a society.
    - abakker 2y ago
      Username checks out :). But, really, I think we’re both posting with a bit of hyperbole here. Of course monetizing resources is how we get resources. OTOH, not monetizing every resource is fine - there exists the possibility of future value in some resources that we haven’t discovered.
- Loughla 2y ago
AStonesThrow 2y ago
My father and my sister have geology degrees, and some of my father's early science work was mining-adjacent (although he also helped survey for the CA Aqueduct project). He remains fascinated with them, and we'd often travel to mining towns (one in particular) to check out the neighborhood and scenery. When I was in high school, our big "California Vacation" was to the Mother Lode Country, all up and down the center of California, from SD to Yreka (I considered it absurd that there was "Eureka"--also the state motto--and the comparatively obscure "Yreka" even further north). We stopped in places like Virginia City, Lodi, Sacramento, and more. We saw Sutter's Fort. I saw punk rockers in a small town just hanging out. All my sister wanted was a pool at our motel. We fought and bickered constantly. It was a huge disaster, but very scenic and generated plenty of memorable family photos.
- triyambakam 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing that. He sounds like a good father.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    He really is!! He taught me so much science, chemistry, radio, technology, just sort of whispering facts in my ear. It was the gentlest way to learn really amazing stuff when I was extremely too young and shouldn't have understood any of it. I was into space flight and computers by 3rd grade (1980). What's amazing is how badly I fared in my systematic science classes beginning in high school. I started taking them over summertime, figuring I could handle a relaxed, accelerated schedule, but was far too social and flirting with girls to pay any attention. I didn't really expect to use hard natural sciences in an IT career anyway. I don't even use Calculus!
    - defrost 2y ago
      The scope was there had you wanted to pursue that path; in 1980 I started working on very large scale mapping software, building custom real time OS's and instruments, and ended up in exploration geophysics which included just a little calculus (upward and downward continuations of magnetic fields, a thousand and one Kalman filter applications, FFT's and wavelets, all manner of fancy math).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
iszomer 2y ago
Sierra Gordo and Ghost Town Living?

57 points by bikenaga 2y ago

problemsolver77 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

throwup238 2y ago

To add insult to injury, the vast majority of these mines have been closed off to the public in the last 20 years for liability reasons, even the ones that don’t generate significant amounts of latent pollution. Obviously most people don’t want to be around a defunct uranium mine but the same policies have closed off all other mines. You used to be able to roll up on a mine tailing pile or even go into the mine to look for mineral specimens. Even though the mines are no longer economically viable, they were a gold mine for rock hounds and educators looking for interesting rocks. Now all of that is gone and all we have left is bullshit commercial operators that make fake tailing mixed with commercially sourced gems.

skipkey 2y ago
There are still quite a few accessible mines on public lands in Arizona. Well, generally the mine shafts themselves are off limits for safety reasons, but you can usually get to the tailings piles. In the last couple of years I have pulled nice specimens of chrysocolla, fluorite, onyx from tailings.
bhhaskin 2y ago
It is a very good thing abandoned mines are closed. They are deadly and you should never go into one.
- defrost 2y ago
  As someone who is over 60 and who has been going into abandoned mines for 40 years can I ask why? What's next, no more bungy jumping, free climbing, surfing The Right, sinkhole diving, mustering cattle, etc?
  - notheyarent 2y ago
    Yes. Those are all extremely dangerous activities and our public hospitals should not be carrying the burden
    - throwup238 2y ago
      I don’t think you understand what “mustering cattle” means...
      - defrost 2y ago
        Growing up in the Kimberley it was all Bull Buggies, Broomstick choppers, Quarter Horses and dirt bikes, all intrinsically a wee bit risky - but good practice for "grown up" geophys surveying in custom STOL crop dusters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B-zWxDJOZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B-zWxDJOZU
        082349872349872 2y ago
        3:54 B taurus indicus begs to differ! (no oysters on the menu plz?) The guy who taught me to swing a Brunton was over four times my age, and whenever we were hiking in to a site he led us in: this basically meant we young vegetables would be frantically scrambling up to a nearby ridge so we could spot where he'd got to, only to eventually notice him waving cheerfully at us from the next ridge line over.
        defrost 2y ago
        Buuuut they roast up so fine :( 'Wee bit risky" is right, keep your head on a swivel and don't be on the quad bike when the irate bull flips it and all is okay. Your leading surveyor was very much our father when we were in single digits .. four hour long walks across rugged landscapes and down gorges with him as a barely visible dot waaaay up ahead. He's a lot slower now approaching 90 .. but can still split wood and shovel a tonne or two.

jeffbee 2y ago

It surprised me when I moved west how recent some of these are, and that they are not all out in the middle of nowhere. There's a gold mine in Napa County that was developed in the 1980s, well after CEQA was enacted. The guy who owns it took out a billion dollars worth of gold and left a big hole where all the acid is impounded behind a dam, in the middle of the Cache Creek watershed. I visit that region frequently and I always wonder why we thought we had to do every last gold mine.

abakker 2y ago
same reason we monetize every click, fund every ad tech, and track every data point. People feel the need to exploit resources in order to get rich. A billion dollars in actual gold is pretty real. Look at superfund sites like Captain Jack mine in Boulder. significant un-managed harm and not that much commercial output.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  If only we could get back to lifestyle devoid of using any resources...
  - defrost 2y ago
    The middle ground is have states bake minesite remediation costs into the permissions contracts of mining leases and to enforce such obligations upon those who profit so as to not allow "bankruptcy" defaults by shell companies. This will increase resource costs, put downwards pressure on consumption, etc but we'll still function as a society.
  - abakker 2y ago
    Username checks out :). But, really, I think we’re both posting with a bit of hyperbole here. Of course monetizing resources is how we get resources. OTOH, not monetizing every resource is fine - there exists the possibility of future value in some resources that we haven’t discovered.
Loughla 2y ago

AStonesThrow 2y ago

My father and my sister have geology degrees, and some of my father's early science work was mining-adjacent (although he also helped survey for the CA Aqueduct project). He remains fascinated with them, and we'd often travel to mining towns (one in particular) to check out the neighborhood and scenery. When I was in high school, our big "California Vacation" was to the Mother Lode Country, all up and down the center of California, from SD to Yreka (I considered it absurd that there was "Eureka"--also the state motto--and the comparatively obscure "Yreka" even further north). We stopped in places like Virginia City, Lodi, Sacramento, and more. We saw Sutter's Fort. I saw punk rockers in a small town just hanging out. All my sister wanted was a pool at our motel. We fought and bickered constantly. It was a huge disaster, but very scenic and generated plenty of memorable family photos.

triyambakam 2y ago
Thanks for sharing that. He sounds like a good father.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  He really is!! He taught me so much science, chemistry, radio, technology, just sort of whispering facts in my ear. It was the gentlest way to learn really amazing stuff when I was extremely too young and shouldn't have understood any of it. I was into space flight and computers by 3rd grade (1980). What's amazing is how badly I fared in my systematic science classes beginning in high school. I started taking them over summertime, figuring I could handle a relaxed, accelerated schedule, but was far too social and flirting with girls to pay any attention. I didn't really expect to use hard natural sciences in an IT career anyway. I don't even use Calculus!
  - defrost 2y ago
    The scope was there had you wanted to pursue that path; in 1980 I started working on very large scale mapping software, building custom real time OS's and instruments, and ended up in exploration geophysics which included just a little calculus (upward and downward continuations of magnetic fields, a thousand and one Kalman filter applications, FFT's and wavelets, all manner of fancy math).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

iszomer 2y ago

Sierra Gordo and Ghost Town Living?