High on a mountain….we find another adventure

We found a road on one of our maps and decided to follow it today, and are we glad we did.

We soon found that the road was not even close to where it was supposed to be according to the map, so we followed the road not the map.

For the final mile of the road it rose steeply (as in STEEPLY) up a mountain.

(see me?)

(see Vicky?)

And then went down into a valley that clearly was an old mining area.  The road then rose on the other side of the valley, against the cliffs (can be seen in the photo as the white line running left to right in the upper middle of the photo).


The mine area showed the usual pits, rotting wood, and rusted tin cans:

 This was interesting.  Some of the old ties that supported the rail lines that the mining carts used:

As seen in an earlier photo, after the mining area, the road rose again, along the base of the cliffs, and went to who knows where.  We got to the end of it, but found nothing but another small hole that was either the start of a mine, or more likely, just one of the probably millions of holes that were dug in the Southwest to see if a mine in that spot would be profitable.

The view from the end of the road was spectacular.

We have no way of knowing how old this mining area is. After Patton established the Desert Training Centers several miners in the areas close to them were "encouraged" to leave.  If they didn't, the second level of "encouragement" was that the soldiers fired their tank cannons over their heads into the mountains.  That seemed to have worked.

But this area could be much older than that.  We would like to know, but there is no way to get that information.....making the mystery that much more interesting.