We had thought to stay close to home on Sunday, maybe do a short hike up one of the Cottonwood Canyons, but when Captain Mike said he’d hoped to take us on a tour of some of the Park City area mines, we were all for it. We picked him up at his house and then drove into Park City proper, up through the Old Town portion (lovely, older, fantastically-painted and $1M price-tagged mining shacks) to the trailhead. We started off going UP immediately, following a recently improved dirt road, then moved off the road onto a heavily overgrown singletrack. Despite the sunshine overhead it was chilly down out of the light in the canyon, with remnants of the previous day’s hail crunching underfoot. As we ascended, we passed small “prospects” – where folks had thought there might be stuff worth mining – and the waste-rock dumps from these digs.
When we emerged from the depths of the canyon, we were at the base of the Silver King Mine, an expansive, complicated operation that had its heyday at the turn of the century. Located under the upper terminus of the Town Lift for the Park City Mountain Resort, the mine ruins consist of a massive mill derelict, the building containing the mine proper, several smaller (and by “smaller” I mean medium-warehouse-sized) buildings, wooden watertowers, tram towers, explosives sheds and the mine dump. Captain Mike had a book* with him with historical pictures of the mine - the complex was massive. It’s still massive – it’s just falling apart now.
Captain Mike took us into the mill building where we entered at the ground floor and went up at least five stories, coming out at on the top floor where the ore carts had rolled in on their rails from the mine. Although the mill building is clearly on its last legs, it was also clearly built to last, with metal stairs between the floors, huge steel beams and concrete floors – all necessary to support the enormous metal machinery and the tons and tons of rock it had to chew up. These impressive industrial ruins were just incredible and H took picture after picture after picture.
Next was the mine building which contains the mine shaft** (descending some 1400+ feet straight down into the earth), the giant steel hoist which held the elevators that went up and down the shaft, bringing men and ore to and from the surface, as well as the electrical switch room, a machine-shop and a smithy. We peeked over the edge of the shaft: it goes a long way down. Captain Mike said he’s dropped little stones down there before and he’s never heard them hit bottom.
After checking out the Silver King mine building, we inspected the other area outbuildings and then continued our hike, back down the other side of the canyon. On the way to the next mine we were duly impressed by some serious hand-made mountain biking elements that some local kids had constructed in the woods. Let me just say right now that I will never, ever, ever ride on bridges like those.
We saw the remains of the Massachusetts mine (just a concrete footer for the hoist, the rock dump and a few abandoned ore samples) on our way down to the Alliance mine. All that is left here is the old mine manager’s office – a wooden building filled with broken core samples – and the power plant. We also saw the terminus of the Judge Mining & Smelting Co.: the building is completely sealed off (and is a Federal Offense to trespass here) because they still use the old tunnel to channel water down to Park City.
After we finished the day’s hike – a four-hour loop, of course – we took a quick tour of the Deer Valley ski resort (which is Captain Mike’s ski area of preference, based out of the Silver Lakes Lodge), and then took him home. He’s determined to take us up his favorite Wasatch trail near the Brighton ski resort before the snow gets too deep, however, so we may have more hiking to report on for next weekend!
* Treasure Mountain Home: Park City Revisited, by George A. Thompson and Fraser Buck (1981).
** We learned this terminology: the shaft is the vertical hole that runs from the surface to however far down the mine goes; any level horizontal hole into the earth is called an “adit;” an adit that angles down is a “decline;” an adit that angels upwards is an “incline;” and an adit that goes all the way through to come out the other side is a “tunnel.”
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What a find Captain Mike is! Deer Valley is where PJ (worked at Sunday River a long time ago) skied and was told by a liftie that he might want to purchase a new pair of gloves in their shop. His had some duct tape on them.
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