Goldstone
It was the
middle of January. We were headed north on the Copper Mountain
Road out of Barstow. It's a well graded road and the 33 miles to
Goldstone, our ultimate destination, should have passed in no time at
all. However, we had a detour planned. We had found a reference
to a turquoise claim, the Chut Turquoise Mine, and decided to see if
through the magic of GPS we could locate it. This necessitated
a detour off of Copper Mountain Road onto a two track that would lead
to Williams Well, the center of a placer mining area that is now attracting
metal detectorists. From Williams Well we headed northeast in our
quest for the turquoise claim at 35*08.28 N and 116*55.10 W. We
were a bit skeptical about the coordinates because these are interpolations
when it comes to the old mines. They didn't have GPS then! However,
we did find an area of mining activity near that location and we
set out to explore it. A long exploration into a tunnel failed
to turn up any evidence of turquoise. However, on top of the hill
that the tunnel went into, we did find something that resembled turquoise! Some
additional exploring turned up more old mine evidence and it was with
reluctance that we turned north toward Goldstone to make camp before
nightfall.
We arrived
at Goldstone (35*17.963 N and 116*55.039 W) at sunset. This
town, now mostly obliterated, began life in the 1880's as a gold mining
town. Activity in the area continued until just before WWII when
all mines were finally abandoned. The major mines were the Goldstone,
Belmont and the Redbridge. We drove slowly along a ridge that had
a nice view to the north of the Goldstone
Deep Space Communications Complex. This
facility is at the edge of the Fort Irwin Military Reservation and is
a deep space communications center. It uses huge dish antennas
up to 230' to provide radio communication for all of NASA's interplanetary
spacecraft, as well as for radio astronomy and radar observations of
the solar system and the universe. From the campsite we chose we
could just see the tip of one of these antennas. A cozy fire
and a full moon made for a reasonably comfortable night at this 3000'
elevation.
As the sun
gradually warmed us up, we broke camp and began our explorations of the
mines. Our first discovery, sadly, was of the carapace of a desert
tortoise. A mine near our camp had an interesting tunnel
and some nice debris. Another location due south of our camp proved
to be great for exploration. Old foundations, shafts, tunnels,
debris, an arrastre, and all sorts of old junk held our attention for
several hours. Finally we headed for what once was the main part
of town. Again, very little is left. We found some foundations,
scattered glass and other assorted flotsam and jetsam. On our way
out we checked out another shaft. This one was extremely deep. We
dropped a rock down it and are still waiting to hear it hit bottom! As the afternoon
lengthened we scurried across Superior Dry Lake and then turned south
on Copper Mountain Road to take us back to Barstow. We had certainly
had a busy weekend. Any of the spots that we visited could have
had several days devoted to them. Click on the pics to see some
visuals.