Exploring Active Mines: Alleghany's Sixteen to One Mine

Located in the California mountain town of Alleghany, the Sixteen to One Mine is now the oldest gold mining corporation in the United States and with more than 26 miles of underground workings, it is a seriously impressive operation! This remarkably rich lode gold mine was located in 1896 by a man named Thomas Bradbury in his backyard (we should all be so lucky). More than a million ounces of gold have been extracted from the Sixteen to One Mine over the course of its existence (an amount worth well over a billion US dollars at current gold prices) and there is still much more gold inside of the mine waiting to be found... The gold inside of the Sixteen to One Mine does not follow a set pattern and is instead found in rich pockets randomly scattered across the quartz vein that the mine follows. Some of the pockets of gold are as small as an ounce or two and others contain tens of thousands of ounces of gold. The very existence of the Sixteen to One Mine revolves around locating these pockets of gold. The lower levels of the mine are presently flooded, but they are being dewatered at this time as the Sixteen to One Mine has two new gold detectors with proven successes in identifying gold in quartz previously undetected with older models. The potential of this new technology has inspired the company to pay the price of dewatering and rehabilitating the lower levels of the mine in order to pursue the gold they know is down there. No one has walked inside of the 3000 level since 1939 and so one can only imagine what might be found down there now. At present rates of pumping, the water in the lower levels of the mine is dropping at the rate of about 100 feet per month and access to the 3000 level may be restored by as soon as June of 2018. On this visit, we entered through the 800 Crosscut and first proceeded to the 49 Winze. Following this, we then headed deeper inside of the mine before dropping down through multiple levels to an incredible cavern that the miners carved out inside of the Sixteen to One Mine - the company calls this “The Ballroom” for its immense size and acoustics… For more information on the Sixteen to One Mine or even to buy physical gold or stock shares from the company, one can visit their website at: http://www.origsix.com/ ***** All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really does make a difference… You can click here for the full playlist of mines: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L If you like these videos on exploring mines, please subscribe! https://goo.gl/yjPxH1 Thanks for watching! ***** Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well. These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that niche of our history is gone forever. But, guess what? We have fun doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a hundred years, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born. So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures! #ExploringAbandonedMines #MineExploring #AbandonedMines #UndergroundMineExploring