This one is located in central Kentucky. The owner has had serious problems with trespassers and is concerned about liability; the real name and specific location of this one will not be made public.
This used to be one of the most advanced mills in central Kentucky; now it's a pile of scrap.
But, piles of scrap often contain hidden treasures. This is a Chain-Belt bucket elevator, which would lift crushed ore near-vertically and dump it into a bin for loading into trucks. This mill seems to have consisted of little more than a grizzly for screening large rock, and some variety of crusher that was removed after the mine shut down. It may not sound like much now, but a fixed plant of this size was a big deal for a small mine around 1906, when this area was active.
This bunker, built into the bluff, was used to store explosives used in the mine.
Moving on up the hill, this shows both the mine office/shop and the portal.
The shop was mainly used to store pipe fittings and spare parts. We found two utility lines running into the mine, almost certainly water and compressed air. This indicates that a jackleg or other pneumatic rock drill was used.
This is a lot smaller inside than the modern mines I usually explore! Still easily tall enough to stand in, however. The miners were following a vein of calcite, which is not clearly visible in this photo.
Significant stoping (removal of ore, leaving large chambers like this behind) was performed once the vein opened up to several feet wide. Timbers (called stulls) were inserted for ground control.
To stope a vertical vein like this, miners would usually drive a raise upwards, and begin working laterally. A network of timbers, ladders, wooden working platforms, and ore chutes would then be developed to facilitate access and removal of blasted ore. Jackleg drills can easily weight 130lbs fully configured; getting them up in this stope would have been a chore!
The wooden ore chute seen here would have held blasted ore until a gate at the mouth was slid back to load an ore car waiting below. There were three chutes like this one in this mine; the other two were rotten through and collapsed years ago.
I threw this 'blueprint' together to show the overall layout of the site. I think I'll make more of these in the future!
EDIT: I also put together drawings showing lateral sections of the mine along the vein. Vein mines in this region are essentially two-dimensional; top-down mapping would be mostly pointless.
