Ghost Mine Thursday! The Tar Baby Mine, Big Cottonwood District, Utah

So here we are. Many months have passed since I have written about the exciting and poorly ventilated field of abandoned mine exploration. Rest assured, my pause in weaving somewhat true tales about my exploits across this great state has not been caused by lack of material. No, the real cause is my huge lack of motivation of doing anything other than sitting on my couch and looking around. You see a lot, you know, by just sitting and looking around. Mostly just spiders. I hate my couch.

Let's go to the main event. Or should I say, the MINE event! No, no I shouldn't. Because that is a joke that only the old and dangerously shy would make. I think I've made this point before, but it's worth restating. Jokes about geology are a very slippery slope (landslides!). One second you are the king of the party, I mean, you are killing it. Where you go, the party follows. You're feeling confident, too confident. So you let loose with a geology joke. Perhaps it's about how quartz forms in inappropriate shapes, or perhaps you go the route of how stupid metamorphic rocks are. Either way, get ready to go to bed alone. Forever.

(See how I slipped a landslide joke in there? It wasn't funny, but it did prove the point I was making. So lonely).

Well, let's move on for reals. Here we are.....

Why are we here? Have I really dragged us away from our important real-life doings to look at what is likely a structure that is no stranger to meth? On the surface it may look like I'm going to attempt to write an entire blog post about a pile of tetanus. But let us not forget the famous saying, "Don't ye judge a shed by the....structural integrity....of it". Some of that may be off. My Shakespeare is a little rusty. Anyway, in all actuality  that pile of debris is hiding the Tar Baby Mine. 

As we've learned before, the first step in going into a mine is to find out where the mine is. This can be a problem, as mines tend to blend in with their surroundings very well.

Well, sometimes. Mines kinda do what they want. Anyway, I only bring this point up because I actually had no idea where this mine was. I don't know much about nature, and I subscribe to the school of thought that predicts that if you go wandering out into the bushes looking for something, then investigators are likely going to find your remains in a pile of moose scat, or perhaps the scat of any number of horrible things that are just waiting for us to go outside. Scat is a funny word.

Anyway, we need clue. Something that will let us know that we are close to a mine. We know that the mine is located somewhere in Big Cottonwood Canyon. This area....

Um. Pretend that map says "Tar Baby Mine" instead of "Confidence Mine". They are pretty close and I'm too lazy to go switching all that up. Anyway, what clues do abandoned mines leave behind you ask? Well, they can be subtle, but the clues are there. For example, take a look at this!

Look at those unusual sticks laying there on the ground. They seem to be trackular in nature. Almost too trackular to be ignored. If you find tracks while wandering aimlessly out in the woods, then chances are you are either near a mine or you are actually standing on a particularly well vegetated portion of a mass transit, system and will likely soon be in the newspaper. Luckily, for us, I know that we are actually very close to a mine. And by me I mean the guy who showed me where this mine was.

And so, in we go. 

Wave goodbye to the outside world with its promises of fresh air and loved ones!

Let us enter the world of unnecessary risk! Speaking of playing unnecessary risk, some of you may notice a few crazy orbs near either side of the metal tracks near the center of the photo. Now, some folks (democrats mostly) believe these orbs are ghosts, but in orb form. I’m not here to tell you what to think concerning these spherical potential visitors from the other side. This post is about a ghost mine, not ghosts in the mine. That’s a whole different subject that requires an audience that is much more amenable to alcohol and frizzy hair. 

Let’s wander in a little deeper. The Tar Baby Mine was incorporated way back in the glorious year of 1911, and was worked until the late 1930’s. Ah, 1911. I remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t have a joke to end this statement. Ah well. Look! 

Here are some more ancient words from the past! RWR 1938 and 1936. After extensive research (a google search) I have been unable to determine what exactly RMR refers to. Sometimes the past is mysterious.

Anyway, let’s see what lies ahead! The Tar Baby Mining Company initially drove two adits (remember folks! That’s a fancy word for horizontal tunnel!) into the mountainside. This particular adventure was completed within the lower tunnel. Sadly, the upper tunnel has long since passed from this world and has moved into the world of collapsed things. That world sucks. Anyway, the nearby Cardiff Mine was making more money than two prize winning racehorses duct-taped to six or seven software engineers all while being ridden by the world’s most frugal pimp. Typically when one mine is pulling in the dough, people will get the idea that if they stick enough holes into the mountainside nearby that mine, then they can earn enough money to buy a few racehorse-pimps of their own. This was the thought process of the Tar Baby Mining Company. Lookie here! A stope!

Do you remember what exactly a stope is? It is a big cavern that is created when the miners dug all that sweet, sweet goodness out of the ground. They usually are propped up using all sorts of various wooden devices, as seen here. Also sometimes they have moldy old ladders in them, as also seen here. You know what happens to wooden devices when you shove them in water for a long time? All sorts of horrible things start to grow on them. See?

It’s not unusual to come across these horrible furry little devils while mine exploring. I’ve always tried to avoid them, but sooner or later they get you. Nothing happens, it’s just unnerving. Like when a lightbulb burns out while you’re peeing, or driving near old people. Uh oh, looks like we've got problem.

In hopes of drawing larger viewership from the powerful "I want to interact with this blog" crowd, I'm going to let YOU the reader chose which way we go next. Go ahead! It's easy! Just select the way!

Nah, we're going left first. Go make your own mining blog if you want to make the decisions! All bow before me in this electronic world of nerdy pastimes! The Tar Baby Mine was geologically very similar to the afore-mentioned Cardiff mine, so it makes sense that the miners and owners (mostly the owners) were very optimistic that their mine would be an equally shining monument to the world of lung disease. They drifted in and encountered this little fella....

That may not look like much, but you've got yourself an ore vein there. That's what it's all about. A two inch wide vein of silver- and gold-rich pyrite and galena. But there isn't enough there to do anything with (that's what she said). So let's follow it down a ways and see if the vein ever opened up into something worth risking your life over....

This material averaged over 120 oz of silver per ton, and also had a smattering of gold in there too. I don't know how much. I could make something up if you want. This material contained 7 gold. That seems pretty good. Ah, now here's something...

The vein continues! And now it comes with numbers! 3117. I'm not sure what this means. Miners didn't leave a whole lot of ways to decipher their cryptic and often mildly offensive markings! But rest assured, at one point that meant something very important to somebody.  At this point the vein takes a sharp turn to the downward, which would be a problem if we weren't dealing with a group of people who had nothing else to do but dig downwards. And so they did...

That there is a prime example of an inclined shaft (that's what, ah, nevermind). When veins galloped off into the hillside at an angle, the miners would chase it, like a sweaty, ill-tempered hobo chasing a pigeon. What? Anyway, it can be hard to lift ore up things, so it would be nice to have a little engine at the top that would do it for us. Ask and you shall receive!

That there is a hand-operated windlass (elevator thingy). You turn that wheel, and your ore cart comes trudging up towards you. Or at least that was the idea 100 years ago. Now I'm guess that if you turn that wheel you will probably end up with a rusted bit of metal in your hand. Sadly, this concludes our trip down this tunnel as it got real collapsy looking from there on out. But the Tar Baby Company chased this vein for thousands of feet down this shaft, and only found a few hundred tons of high-grade ore. That sounds good to me, but I guess that's not considered a good return. This may be a good time (and if it's not I'm doing it anyway) to investigate what we are seeing here with regards to geology. I mean, that's what we are all here for, right? Give us geology or give us death, and all that. Well, long story short, it's very complex. And what do we do when things are complex? We make gross oversimplifications in the medium of stick figure drawing. Let's do that now!

The first important step in Utah's geologic history is a long one. A step largely covered in water. You see, for the past zillion years, Utah has been a quiet, unassuming part of the ocean floor. As opposed to now, where it is a quiet, unassuming part of the desert floor. Anyway, the point to take away here is that for most of it's history, the western U.S. has been very soggy. 

The next important step in the formation of the Wasatch Front (that's what us Utahn's call the Wasatch Mountain Range) is the drying up of all that water. This actually happened several times, but I'm not in the mood to draw several pictures. So this one is going to have to do.

There we are. Those lines are supposed to represent several different layers of rock that were deposited by the sea. Oceanic environments typically deposit rocks such as limestone and dolomite, both of which are readily susceptible to having ore deposits shoved within them....

Here's where things get odd. About 105 million years ago, Utah got squished by the early version of the San Andreas Fault. Yes, before it was destroying the L.A. Lakers, that fault was busy shoving much of Utah over much of Colorado. I would love to get into the details here, but we really do need to get moving. So you will just have to trust me about this. What's important to take away from this is that this compression formed several very large thrust faults. Faults are large cracks that form in the crust that allow various parts of your community to move past parts of other people's communities. Also they destroy everything. Let's move onto step.

Also it's important to observe the formation of the Alta Thrust Fault, a relatively large crack in the surface of the earth that is important in this next step. The Alta Thrust Fault was created as a result of older rock being squished on top of younger rock! Imagine that this whole situation is a sandwich that just got caught in a trash compactor. As a result of the compaction, the mustard got squished on top of the ham, even though you put the ham onto the sandwich first. Then, about 40 million years ago, step 4 began. A relatively large body of hot, mineral-rich magma got shoved into the sandwich. In doing so, the magma body forced mineral-rich fluids into the limestone. This was particularly true along previously created fault lines, such as the Alta Thrust Fault. Is this important? Oh my yes.

   

The compression that was so effectively created the Alta Thrust Fault soon gave way to extensional forces, which created the Wasatch Mountains as we know them today. The valley floor dropped to the west, while the Wasatch Mountains rose to the east. This allowed our tobacco spitting, prostitute visiting fore-fathers to discover the wealth that the volcanic intrusions left behind! Sadly, the Tar Baby Mine is located pretty far away from one of those magmatic intrusions, and as such it received very little ore-body building material. That little bit of information would have saved a lot of people a lot of time in the 1920's. 

And so, there we are. A hugely complex geological event summarized into five poorly illustrated steps. Let's move along.

Let's get out of this tunnel of disappointment. Maybe the other tunnel will reward us with geological riches!

It's like being birthed, but with less birth-sauce everywhere. Now here's something you won't see (hopefully?) in any birth canal....

More miner writings. I am starting to suspect that these are the initials of some long-dead miner. But it could just as likely be literally anything else. So, again, not helping you out a whole lot with "facts". Let's keep going.....

Ah, a dead end. Or is it?????

This picture doesn't clear anything up, does it? Well, what you are seeing is a raise (upward shaft!). Or more correctly, you are seeing some boards that cover a raise...

This shaft was completed in 1913, and was largely used to ventilate the mine by bringing in air from the surface some 800 feet upwards. As a fun fact, it also connected with several other of the mines in the area! Everyone loves fun facts. 

Well, there you have it. A really creepy looking part that I don't dare go down and a shaft that goes straight up. I'm calling it a day. Let's go back outside and see if we can find something cool laying around. Ah ha! We didn't have to wait long!

Ah yes, the miner's most valuable piece of equipment. This mine was worked largely after the period in which prostitutes were plentiful, but I'm guessing one or two still made it up there. And so their legacy lives on. Largely in the form of illegitimate children. 

Oh, a few last thing to touch on before we start re-reading this post again (because it was so good). There were reports of additional rich mineralized veins located by folks who leased the mine (generally mining companies lease the rights to pull out whatever you want from their mine once they have gotten their fill) located at deepest portions of the mine, but excessive water made it too dangerous to work down there. So the 1940's hit and everyone went home or to war. And so ended the Tar Baby Mine. 

The end (officially). 

Ghost Mine Monday - Confidence Mine, Big Cottonwood District

Well, here we are again. Another week, another blog post. What should we cover this week? A mine? Is that all you people can think about? I have so much more to offer! Fine, we'll look at a mine so you crybabies will get off my back. But that means you won't get to read about the time I tried to make crepes. I guess that's ok because that story would only make us feel bad.

Writing about mines is tricky. Some people don't like posts about mines. It doesn't have cats saying "I can haz" or stuff like that, nor does it have *ahem* blue content. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what it has. Huh. I've kinda run out of steam. Well, nothing to do but power forward! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you....



Yesssirree, we are about to embark on another journey into the cold clutches of lady earth. And our portal to earthly delights is named the Confidence Mine. Oh, look, here we are!



Friendly little place, isn't it? Going into mines can take some getting used to, and probably shouldn't ever be done anyway. But before we dive right in, we need a few facts. Facts are like little hammers we can use to bash in the nails of ignorance while we create the ship of enlightenment! Or something like that. I'm tired.

The first item we need to know is where the mine is. Well, that one is easy enough. It's in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Still confused? Let's look at the map!




The Big Cottonwood Mining District is located within beautiful Big Cottonwood Canyon. It's a feisty little geologic feature located not too far from downtown Salt Lake City, and is full of all sorts of wildlife that one would expect to find in the wilderness. It is called Big Cottonwood Canyon because it is located right next to a smaller canyon that has conveniently named Little Cottonwood Canyon. Actually, it's located right next to several smaller canyons, but I'm not in the mood to list them. Most are filled with rich people's houses guarded with big fancy gates with names like "Le Mason De Ted" or "Doctor Bill's Palatial Palace". As an interesting side note, these people don't like to buy Scout-o-Rama tickets, so don't waste your time. Anyway, I imagine that after nearly 170 years of constantly being reminded that it is the smaller of the two canyons, Little Cottonwood Canyon has got to be pretty upset, but what is it going to do about it? Glaciate us back into the stone ages? When your movements are measured in eons, it can be hard to exact revenge.

Anyway, now that we know where we are, let's look at a little history. The Big Cottonwood Mining District fired up around the year 1870. The initial prospectors were army scouts sent out by Colonel Patrick O'Connor, and then ran around digging holes here and there, laughing and swearing and doing whatever other things they did. As a reward for their efforts, they discovered several rich ore bodies just waiting to be plucked from the picnic basket of lady nature. The ore generally consisted of our old friend galena (you should read that post again) which was joined by the friendly minerals Chalcopyrite (it's basically just pyrite with copper in it), Sphalerite (zinc mixed with a blast of sulfur), and gold, precious, precious gold. Mining in the canyon continued at a stop-and-go pace until 1967, at which point people decided that skiing in the canyon was more fun than digging little holes in it. From that point onward the mines were forgotten, and the cursing, scratching, prostitute-frequenting miners were replaced by cursing, scratching, prostitute-frequenting lawyers and software designers. The district doesn't have a bad record though. Total metal production amounted to 30,600 ounces of gold, 17.5 million ounces of silver, 18.1 million pounds of copper, 252 million pounds of lead and minty topping of 4.7 million pounds of zinc.

So there we go, now we have the loin-cloth of geologic knowledge that will protect our midsections from the sexually-transmitted diseases of ignorance! The miners have all long left, but look what they left behind! Mines! Mines for us to foolishly explore! In we go!



Well, bad news right from the start. It appears that the Confidence Mine has a little water problem. That's going to happen in mines from time to time. But without water, we wouldn't be able to see the glorious birth of some new stalactites!



In a few hundred thousand years, you are going to have some hefty stalactites on your hands. But you won't get to see them because you'll be long dead. I guess geology got its revenge after all. Now here's something more human in origin...



Wooden stakes! Pounded into the solid rock! These were used to hold cords and powerlines off the floor and out of everyone's way. Now they are just sort...there.



Ah, what fun. Anyway, it's high time we learned where all this water coming from. Look! I think we are hot on the trail....





The water is coming from the very walls we are relying on for life!







Apparently the Confidence Mine has crossed into a rather sizable aquifer within the bedrock. But no time to dwell on that now! Look what we've just found!



That wooden box once held several mighty sticks of dynamite. While it can be fun to come across dynamite boxes, finding dynamite in a mine (which happens on occasion), is a lot less fun. You see, if dynamite doesn't get to fulfill its purpose within a few years of manufacture, it tends to get a little unstable. It's like a Golden Retriever puppy that never gets played with so it ends up being that dog that always seems happy to see you until you get near it and then bites off one of your brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle hightops.

Let's continue down the way and see what we can see...





Huh. More water. That's not very interesting. We can see water in the toilet at home. Hey, now here's something...



Looks like we have ourselves some good old-fashioned miner graffito. Miners would burn these cryptic message into the walls using their carbide lamps. What message has this forgotten soul chosen to pass onto generations of the future? Looks like "9+h". As true now as when it was written.

The Confidence Mine belonged to a group named the Union Associated Group. They were probably a stogy group, sitting around smoking their over-sized cigars, talking about how well their coal monopolies were doing. The mine was founded in 1930, and the workings included two adits (that's what mining folk call horizontal shafts), and a single winze (those are what mining folk call smaller vertical shafts within the mine that are used to access lower levels. This is opposed to a "raise" which is the same thing except used to access higher levels). The reason the whole thing was here was because the prospectors saw this vein...



While that vein didn't have any massive gold nuggets on the surface, miners were always willing to chase them into the hillside in the hope that they may start to have something useful in them later on. Sometimes they will chase it using multiple tunnels, which is what they did here. In fact, let's just draw the thing out so we can get a handle on what's going on.



There. The good news is that all those pictures above came from Adit #1! We still have a bunch of mine to explore! In we go!



Look at this! Not more than 30 feet into the mine and we've already hit miners gold!



That is an inclined winze! Those metal rails are probably part of an old ladder. I say maybe because I'm not sure what I'm talking about. Anyway, what I AM sure of is that this shaft has been reclaimed by the water it was stolem from all those years ago...



Ahh, what fun. I don't know what's down there, but I'm suspecting that there was a reason they dug this thing. People are lazy creatures, and digging pits for no reason is rarely an activity we engage in. Or at least I don't, I can't speak for the rest of you. Weirdos.

Let's move on. Deeper and deeper into the mists of questionable quality!



Ooooo..look! Old wooden railroad ties! Still in place after all these years! Now if only we could find railroad rails. Maybe they will show up later. But for now, we've found something else to occupy our time!





It's a stope! I can't remember if we've covered what a stope is already. But if we haven't, it's a cavern created when miners dig out all the ore. It's like how you feel after getting dumped. A sad mockery of the confident person you used to be. Sounds like you need a trip to the Confidence Mine! Onwards! Look at this!



This part of the mine has kinda caved in. Cave-ins are what cause the hair on the back of your neck to stand up as soon as you enter a mine. The hilarious thing is that you are far more likely to die from falling down an abandoned shaft or breathing bad air than you are to die from a cave-in! Ahhhh, go ahead and laugh at yourselves for being so foolish, then let's move on.





Look at this! Another stope! Also there seems to be another tunnel heading off to our right! What mysteries await us down that tunnel? Nazi Gold? Inca Jewels? Or is it something dangerous like a rabid bear, evil Santa, or a Nissan Cube? Let's boldly go where no one has gone...for a while!



Turns out that there was nothing down that tunnel at all. Just some scary darkness. A little further down the tunnel was a hole that lead down into the bowels of nature. I didn't take any pictures of it because I was too busy trying to get away from it. Sometimes mines have unmapped holes. Let's go down the main tunnel some more. I have a feeling we are about to find something awesome. Like good Santa.



Nope! It was the original rails for the ore carts! Still in place! Usually the mines would pull up their tracks whenever they could because you could sell them for money. Mines were largely ventures that were operated with the intent to make money. That's an important thing to remember. But what about the people who used to work these tunnels? What other artifacts can we find that tell us about them?



Well, we know that they drank Schlitz Beer! This can may indicate that someone was in this mine at some point in the 60's or 70's. Unless the miners in the 1930's discovered some way to obtain beers of the future, which I doubt. Who knows though. Hey, maybe that's what this other mysterious panel of miner's musings is all about.




Looks like we have the letter "S" as well as what may or may not be a crude drawing of an ample buttocks. And to think that these poor miners were born too early to enjoy the song "I Like Big Butts". Don't cry now! We've got to finish off the mine!



Oh, here we are. That my friends, is a backfilled tunnel. Sometimes the miners would do this with their waste rock if they had decided that a particular part of the mine wasn't going to work out. You can't tell from the picture, but there is water squirting out from all over the place, so I'm guessing there is some water behind that playful little wall. Let's retreat to a safe distance and take a moment to learn more history.

The confidence mine was not a huge producer. In fact, it was not even a large producer. It was more of a small producer. Leaser mined a little ore in 1931, and in 1932 it produced a small lot of ore that assayed at $30 to $40 a ton in gold, 100 to 150 ounces of silver per ton, 30% lead and 7% copper. These numbers were measure in 1932 dollars, which would be more like $3000 to $3400 per ton in gold nowadays. These numbers are very impressive, but I don't know how much of the ore they were able to pull out of there. I guess it doesn't matter as in 1934 S.A. Parry, president of the Union Associated Group bought the farm and all mining at the Confidence Mine was ended. Now it's all flooded.

And so ends the saga of the Confidence Mine. Our shoes are wet, but our souls are enlightened with geological empowerment! Now, I'm going to go get a burrito. Good day.