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The Original Sixteen To One Mine (OSTO) is located in the small town of Alleghany, CA - NE of Nevada City (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...,1.674042&z=10).
The OSTO is a large mine physically, but a fairly small operation. It's history is extensive, and can be checked out on their website http://www.origsix.com. For the history, click on "The Mine" tab, but don't miss the "Gold Sales" tab and be sure to select "The Best of the Best". Their “Whopper” specimen is a white quartz piece with 141 oz of native gold!
Where most lode gold mines have veins of gold sulfides, the OSTO is a pocket mine where the gold is typically found in its native state, and quite often the mother rock is white quartz - absolutely beautiful.
In 2002, while I lived in Oregon, I was mostly working in Massachusetts. As our customer was pleased with our work, my company wanted to give me a weekend away as a bonus. However, they weren't sure what I'd want to do. I told them I'd always wanted to take the extended tour of the OSTO, but the tour was $250. My company said that was OK, so I set it up.
I flew into Sacramento and drove out to Alleghany. I stayed the night in a rental room that the Underground Gold Miners Museum had. The next morning, I had breakfast at the cafe, and headed down to meet Rae at the mine office. She gave me my sack lunch, and took me over to the mine's gold sales department. The gold specimens were incredible, and their slabs of white quartz with small veins of gold coursing through were just gorgeous!
Then it was off to the mine entrance. Somewhere I have notes from my trip with the names of the miners that I shadowed. However, after several moves, I'm not sure where those are, so I apologize that the miners will remain unnamed (unless someone recognizes them at posts below!).
After I was fitted with a helmet, rechargeable headlamp, and a rescue breather, we were off into the mine. Our first stop was to watch a miner cleaning out a small stope from the previous days blast. I'd seen this equipment in museums before, but it was great to see it in action.
We then made our way toward the lower bowels of the mine. Toward the end, we rode down a winze on a skip platform cart. While they had found little gold in this new push, they were still very hopeful.
Next we went to a small carved out tool room/repair room, climbed up the ladder in a winze, and made our way over the the mine's In/Out board. Nearby was the mine's famous tag timber. When a miner left the employment of the mine, then his tag was “retired” by nailing it to this timber. The respect of the retired miner can generally be judged by the care taken in nailing his tag to the timber. Some were carefully mounted to the timber with a small nail, while others were spiked to the timber with a mine rail spike – fully obliterating the miner's ID number. (I love these type of stories that add a dimension of personality to the miners!).
We finally made it up to a common area where several small drifts radiating outward. I met up with the miner that I'd be shadowing for the afternoon and we had lunch. Afterward we watched another miner muck out his small stope. Then we headed up our small drift which was slightly dog-legged. I even got a chance to run the winch. Then he got me on the drill – putting one hole at an angle in the wall, and another in a boulder that was too large to haul out of the mine in one piece.
Then the miner retrieved the explosives, packed the hole, and let me light it off. We waited safely in the central area to hear our 'boom' . Then we proceeded to another miner's drill pattern – charged and ready to light off. He knew there was a wanna-be in the mine, and waited for us to come by so I could light off his charge – What a thrill!
Lastly, we stopped by the main hoist room - really quite a modern equipment room carved out of the middle of the earth!
It was just an incredible trip on a once-in-a-lifetime adventures that truly took me back in time to experience a life that I'd only been able to dream about before!
[Note: If you click on my ID "Miner49r" to the left, select "Profile", and then "Albums", you can see all of the photos from this trip. Admin: You can move these albums to your gallery if you like]
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