United States Abandoned Mine Maps

garym94931

Jr. Member
Jan 21, 2008
29
0
abandoned mines have become a hot topic in government circles because there are so many of them and they're so dangerous and hard to find. the average calculation within california is about 39,000 with a high of nearly 60,000. aside from people falling into vertical shafts covered by brush or rotten wood, homes have caved into subsided mines (one death that i know of a guy in his basement that went into the mine below), and over cave ins have happened on private property in the way of vertical sink holes. also, the chemicals that were used and long buried are percolating either directly into the ground water system or leeching out on the surface into creeks and lakes. i.e. clearlake, california has a problem with mercury i think.... fishing in the lake is legal... but eating the fish is not officially sanctioned by the state due to high levels of heavy metal. the problem is first, nobody knows where they all are... and secondly.... its expensive to deal with them. one idea was to fill vertical shafts with hard foam .... but the political troublemakers screamed about that so i don't know what is next. currently, i've read they just fence them off & if you trespass, well.... you're gonna die.
 

garym94931

Jr. Member
Jan 21, 2008
29
0
thanks for your input. one person asked me last year what happened to everyone on the lake... and HE LIVED THERE. i didn't know the answer but maybe your tale of people swimming until the late 60's is the answer ... bad water. more likely, just so much more to do now than 40 years ago with computers and all. back then, he said it was pretty much water skiing and boating. even TV isn't king any longer.

anyway.. risk is clearly all around us. i just mentioned it because i just learned about it while reading. i wanted to do some metal detecting on the surface areas.. and still might.. but i wanted to warn others on this site of what i had learned.

i hadn't thought about tromping through the brush and running into anything more serious that ticks.... but now i know. there are vertical shafts out there and some 300 feet deep... covered in brush or rotten wood. also, one person mentioned to me that a lot of the mines had fiberous maerials .. like asbestos ... so even walking in the tailings or digging exposes a person to risk. but... onward!
 

Urban Prospector

Sr. Member
Feb 21, 2007
465
12
N OC CA
Detector(s) used
Whites MXT,Compass 94B & 77B
Is there some way to access info at this site? I.d like to reference individual locations, am I not seeing something? i look at the map of CA and there are so many locations and the scale is so off that I just get no info. Is there some back door to expand on locations?
 

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