There were no mine shafts (vertical) at the Del Campo, but there were a couple adits (horizontal). The lower one is down below the trail and the upper one was in a gully above Weeden Lake. The creek shown in the picture is the outflow from Gothic Basin.
Other than that there were no real workings of any size at the property. This bunkhouse served the upper adit, which is not shown in the picture. It would be to the left of the picture and higher up I think. They almost certainly put the bunkhouse there to stay out of the avalanche paths. If there were any excavations at this building, they would have been a root cellar at most. There was another bunkhouse kind of near the lower adit as well, but I don’t know if there are any pictures left of it. In “Discovering Washington’s Historic Mines” they have a great picture of the powerhouse at the lower adit iirc. Not much is left of the site overall though.
Good info, thanks!
I see there is a cart track going into the adit... how far did that cart track go? Would it go all the way down to the valley via Weeden Creek (or up, then down the slope where the Gothic Basin trail is?). Or would it only go a short distance and then material is transferred to mules or something?
Those tracks would have run out of the adit a short ways to dump waste rock, with a possible spur going a bit farther to a bin for ore (if they ever built one). The bin would be positioned so they could load mules with ore, although I don’t think any real amount of ore came out of the mine.
Some mines used surface trams where ore cars would run along a long track like you described, but they are pretty rare in the avalanche full cascades. Surface trams can hold more ore per car, but have a tough time avoiding avalanche chutes. More common was an aerial tram like the ones at the nearby Comet and Monte Cristo Mines. Other than that getting ore from the mine to the road usually consisted of a pack trail.
It's a very short walk over to the cabin site from where the trail breaks over into the basin. The ledge where the cabin sat is pretty protected and not all that close to avalanche areas.
The adit is down to the left. You can see an angling pipe in the lower left of the pic. The trail down from the cabin is more easily seen in my matching pic. According to Phil Woodhouse, the adit is a drift tunnel that produced little ore - none was shipped. The track in the adit must have terminated just outside as there is little room on the ledge and no place to go. I suspect whatever rock removed from the adit was dumped in the creek below or piled up to enlarge the entry area.
Upper Del Campo
Great pics. Wow, the trees really grew up! I know it's been, what, 100 years? But I thought trees would grow slowly at that elevation. I guess whomever colorized the original photo didn't see the path, because they kind of made it blend into the rock.
I thought about hiking up there to see the site, but I'm not sure I would have recognized it. Are there any cabin remains left at all?
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