Delamar Perlite Mine

[go_browns79]

After our trip to Tecopa, Joanne, Tony and I got a day of rest and headed up to the ghost town of Delamar, NV about 2 1/2 hours north of Vegas.

Because of the dry-mining process and its resulting fatalities, at one time there were over 400 widows living in Delamar, earning the town its nickname The Widowmaker.
After the turn of the century, gold production slowed and by 1902 many of the town’s residents had moved on to the new boom town of Tonopah. Not long after, Delamar died for good.

I have been to Delamar once before, but it was before I had SRT gear so I was excited to be back. There are many mines in this area so I looked for one that was on the way to our target mine. I found the Delamar Perlite Mine, it is only about 4 miles off the highway so we thought it was worth checking out. After driving past a heard of cows we got to the mine. I thought it was going to be a dud since there was hardly a tailing pile. We found an entrance that they attempted to back fill and an explosives bunker with a build in combination lock that Tony tried to get open for about an hour with no success.



We headed into the mine not expecting much and were pleasantly surprised. We determined this was more like an underground quarry. The reason there was no tailings is because they took it all. This mine wasn't the longest I've been in but it was definitely the tallest. We found a modern working platform and some drill rods.


This one didn't go to far back but I noticed a couple other adits so I was eager to check them out. Getting Tony to stop digging in the tailings was nearly impossible. The tailings were filled with marble sized pieces of obsidian, which is a natural occurring black volcanic glass. I drove about 100 yards up the road to check out the other adit, it looked promising.



This one was just as tall as the last and went back much further. We immediately found some empty cardboard explosives boxes. Further back we found 3 barrels of water that were Civil Defense supplies dated 1962.



Supposedly there are more Civil Defense supplies in the area, but this is all we found. Since this is all the pics it will let me post I will have to make another post about the Delamar Mine.

The full album can be seen at: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...663.1253455143

[Stuart]

Awesome

Wow that is an interesting mine. We have seen that a couple if times before where there wasn't much in the waste pile because the majority of rock moved out was ore. Off the top of my head the Waterman mine complex outside Barstow CA is another good example. The civil defence supplies are cool, this are getting pretty rare to find now days.

Keep up the exploring!

[Joanne]

Yeah the pearlite was really neat to see because it's so fragile, but the obsidian got me really going. It was embedded in the pearlite testifying to the volcanic nature of the entire area. When my brother and I were little, my mom took us to an "Apache Tear" (obsidian) mine where you could pay to dig out obsidian. This mine let me revisit those happy memories.

Another neat find were some large round "rocks" that were also embedded into the formation. These appeared to have been large clumps of molten matter thrown out of the volcano and landed in the pearlite as it was cooling.

While this is a completely different type of mine than I'm used to visiting, it was a lot of fun to spend a couple of hours wandering around there. Of course when you are with Bill and Tony, you can't help but have a good time!

Joanne