Some weeks ago, I made a great venture with some friends. We visited many places, mostly old mines, but I don't think any of them are really interesting enough to share here, except for this one. Just closed in 2006(I think) and now up for lease, it sits in the eerie silence of the high desert, slammed against the face of one of North America's great mountain ranges.

The maze of conveyor belts is mesmerizing, as is the network of steel grate walkways reaching skyward to over 120 feet. Lucky for us, the wind was calm enough not to entice the structure to sway. The mineral is p_erli_te, commonly used in products like mortar and ceiling tiles, and, oddly, beer filtration, as it expands greatly when heated 500-900˚C.

Looking back, I'm not sure why I blurred the mountains; it won't take a genius to find this place. Also I selected the wrong size when uploading the pictures, so sorry about that.





Kiln in front for heating the rock.


Heat pump.


Sifting mechanism for smaller rocks.


The two tallest silos.


Looking down from near the top. Adult playground!


P_erlite.


Bucket elevator on top of the silos.


Metal chaos


These big ducts laced this end of the mill, we couldn't figure out why.


This is the hopper room, looking into one of the loading bays.


While origami-ing myself into the hopper room.


Dusty in here. The grating has a lot of holes in it, and below is a 20 foot fall into a hopper full of basically rock flour or gravel.


Up there is where the rock went in and through a grizzly, then on to the sifter and cone crusher. Above are pathways for the many control cables that came out of the office.


Command Central. Buttons, breakers, lots of 200,00 ampere fuses.


For starting crushers, conveyors, and everything else.


Cone crusher. Cone in the center rolls around, crushing the rock.


Hoppers and silos are still full! Hard to see, but that is product raining out of the bottom.


Filter socks. These filter air, presumably for dust control?


Superstructure.


Obligatory "My car on the loading ramp" shot.



adult photo sharing

Looks like a nice place! Any tunnels?

The location isn't very obvious, but Google helps as always

P_retty cool
What's wrong, afraid of few web spiders?
Looks like a lot of fun.
It's rare to find sites that i_ntact.

I'm amazed it isn't scrapped to hell already, but I try to do what I can to slow it.

No tunnels here, it was all surface mined.

Man, this looks like a blast. Deserts have a special place in my heart, and industrial jungle gyms are my favorite. Road trip incoming.

Posted by Cherokee The mineral is p_erli_te

lol wtf. Did you recently meet up with someone who talks that way?

Cute little mine, was worth the trip!

This is a great site!
Thoughtful of you romainpp to add your images here; preserving the continuity and adding to the view
Some killer shots!

Great shots! I definitely want to go play.