Exploring The Most Dangerous Mine At Cerro Gordo (For The Last Time)
Exploring The Most Dangerous Mine At Cerro Gordo (For The Last Time)
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In this video, I go exploring the most dangerous mine I’ve been in, and probably the most dangerous mine at Cerro Gordo. This was not just an exploration, we were searching to see if the 200 level opened to the outside, because there were theories that cold air was coming into the main shaft and freezing the water pipes. The mine itself was completely boarded up, so Johnny and I had to dig in from above through tight squeezes to get into the 200 level of the Union Mine. This shaft was deemed too dangerous years after the deadliest mining disaster in Cerro Gordo’s history took the lives of between 8 and 35 miners in the 1870s.
“Cerro Gordo’s deadliest mine disaster struck in the early 1870s when a cave-in killed at least eight and as many as 35 Chinese miners. They were mining in limestone below the 200-foot level and failed to shore up the tunnel with timber, former Cerro Gordo mining foreman Fred Fisher told a Times reporter in 1950. Their bodies were never recovered.”
– LA Times March 12, 1950
THANK YOU!!
I moved to Cerro Gordo in March 2020 because of the pandemic and to relieve our longtime caretaker so he could be back home. I’ve been here ever since. There have been ups and downs, but I feel I am learning a lot and becoming a better person.
Follow along on this channel for more from the town. I have no plans to leave and will continue making videos to update the progress on all the projects!
The town was originally established in 1865 and by 1869 they were pulling 340 tons of bullion out of the mountain for Los Angeles.
The silver from Cerro Gordo was responsible for building Los Angeles. The prosperity of Cerro Gordo demanded a larger port city and pushed LA to develop quickly.
The Los Angeles News once wrote:
“What Los Angeles is, is mainly due to it. It is the silver cord that binds our present existence. Should it be uncomfortably severed, we would inevitably collapse.”
In total, there has been over $17,000,000 of minerals pulled from Cerro Gordo. Adjusted for inflation, that number is close to $500,000,000.
It’s been a wild ride so far owning a ‘ghost town’ and we’re having a lot of fun figuring out what to do with it.
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The type of things that might lead you here are interests in ghost towns, abandoned mining towns, abandoned cities, California history, the zombie apocalypse, ghost stories, scary stories, nature, death valley, lone pine CA, mines, exploring, overnight challenges, exploration, urban exploration and yes theory.
#CerroGordo #GhostTownLiving #Abandoned #Offthegrid
That was the scariest damn mine caving adventure I have ever seen. I actually got that sphincter-tightening claustrophobia just watching this. Jeez. I’m glad I knew you were already back out when I started watching this. Reminded me a lot of Stephen King’s "Desperation" You and Johnny, of all people, should read it. Thanks for an incredible adventure.
13:21
I would love to go down there to bad I’m afraid of hights
No skeletons or anything
If he only knew heavy D would come out and dig out the portal to the 200 and be able to go in from the outside less then a year later
Honestly, I was kinda hoping they’d get to wear the deceased miners were. How could would it be to get them a proper burial and stuff.
Thank you for watching! This was a crazy mine to explore, I’m glad we made it back out without too much trouble. Subscribe to the channel for more and let me know in the comments what you’d like to see in the future!
Hello. Martin Flint here. I think that the place you bought Cerro Gordo is in a great place with a lot of history and I absolutely love the history about the place where you live and the mines that you explore. I would love to do something like that one day just to buy an old town and live there by myself and you know fix things up over a period of time and maybe like your place has a hotel that can be fixed up and maybe in time andI have guest staying to generate revenue to keep things fixed up. Watched the video when you got the water pumping again that was so cool and it seems like it would cost too much to get you know water piped in there so you do the best you can with the resources that you do have. Maybe one day I could visit you and your town if I’m invited as a guest. Keep up the great work.
Freakin Rad!
If god wanted us in caves we would have all been bendable stay out of places I should t go like caves
I’m getting wicked claustrophobia just watching this. Yeah, please… don’t go back in there.
11:20 lense flare from light makes for some creepy blue eyes in the dark backround…
Don’t want to find the chinese miners?
I would love to go through that. What would be really cool is if you guys went through and reinforced parts of those caves and dug it out a bit for people to go through.
All these jeans that get found in mines make me wonder what those guys were doing!
11:20 the blue eyes tho
all the lost DNA missing from some peoples ancestrys, Find the bones added to list
Great video. You have bigger balls than me ! Stay safe man 👍🙋
every time he just grabs a filthy brown scrap of fabric or paper i just cringe like bro what do you think they were doing with that. they had to poop down there somewhere and they didn’t have toilet paper back then
13:55 when you say temperature what’s the short flash of a image. What’s in the image?
irl minecraft
I saw eye’s in the thumbnail
Don’t do this at home? I don’t have a cave in my house so I think I’m ok lol
Wow amazing. You got out in time….
So sad to see you showing no respect for artefacts just moving and taking stuff especially when it’s somewhere miners died I’ve always been taught not to take anything from mines I have a look take photos and move on. please show some respect and don’t remove everything you find
Lol his harness still has tags on it.
you can now create a desert party (festiVAL………GO LEVEL 200)
I’m just watching a video where you’ve been up there for 9 months or maybe more that takes a lot of endurance and will to do. I hope that one day that that you get water piped in somehow and get your hotel up and running and maybe a saloon so you can generate some cash flow to make the place better and maybe make it a place for a b&b or a tourist attraction but I do not know your plans so you may like it the way it is being private. I’m watching the video where the hotel burned down and that is so sad I hope that is at some point you get it rebuilt like I see you’re doing to generate some you know cash flow so you can get the place back to the way it was. Good luck and God bless.
Thanks brent. I didnt have claustrophobia, untill now.
Brent: "Today we explore the 200 Level, the most dangerous level of Cerra Gordo."
Derek Yu: "WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE THAT DOWN!"
The newspaper at 7:22 (where two articles about a murder trial and a blizzard are visible) seems to be from 1934. The names Alfred Kenneth, Busey, and Woods are visible and the L.A. Times has an archived article from February 6, 1934 about the conviction: Alfred Kenneth and Paul Cook were sentenced to 5 years for robbery and "one to fourteen years" for "assault with intent to commit murder", to run concurrently. They killed a man called John Busey and shot John Woods Jr. "which occurred in the gun battle during an attempt to hijack liquor from the Woods home" (crazy times!). I also found an article from "The West Australian" from January 30th, 1934 mentioning the blizzard on Utsuryo Island (this location is visible on the newspaper fragment). The article reports "41 bodies buried in the snow". So I think this dates it pretty well, if these guys were convicted on Feb 6 and this terrible blizzard was being reported on on Jan 29th (date visible in the video) and Jan 30th in Australia, then this paper is probably from around Jan 29-30th, 1934. Pretty cool how we can still find archives from almost 90 years ago.
So what section of level 2 did the 30 miners go missing?
13:55 a frame flashes and looks like a face on the right side 🙄
why would they leave their jeans down in the mines, they would have to walk out in their underwear.
Be funny if you pulled that denim and then a skeleton pops put
Cero gordo have a strike of silver and celebrate with a nice glass of cero gordo whiskey
Me thinking the thumbnail was clickbait: 😒 Me finding out its not: 👁👄👁
I literally LIVE for moments like this! exploring an abandoned town/mine?! Yes please!!! Always watch your ads and like your videos. Helping anyway I can 👍🏻🙂
One plate shift, and God will decide that he doesn’t want all these people, let alone the air pocket that used to exist underground.
At 12:00, Alpha Tau Omega. I wonder who the fraternity brother was, or what school he gave up to go dig in a mine?
that was crazy !!!! but i loved it cheers
you look ill man freaking me out
I seriously swore at the screen 10 times watching this. Anxiety level 💯%
Hit your head = buried alive, never recovered
Brush your shoulder = buried alive, never recovered
Trip and fall, land on ANYTHING = getting the picture yet… fuuuuucccckkkk me
You should get a go pro to put on your helmet
There might be asbestos, careful
My family had a lot of coal miners back in day. Apparently we have an old air quality testing tool thingy in a box somewhere. As far as I’m aware it still works but it’s too delicate to be worth finding out for sure. According to my dad my great great grandfather was an inspector of sorts. His job was to make sure that the miners had the proper working conditions, that air quality thing was just one of the tools that he used. My great grandfather lost one of his middle fingers in a coal press. A chunk of ore fell on his hand and he had to pull his own finger off. I have a lot of stories about my crazy alcoholic great grandfather if anyone’s interested in hearing about the crazy bastard.
This channel makes me so happy just watching so much to enjoy ❤ makes my day everyday when I’m feeling down
Two words
Fuk that
You should have respect for the dead stay out you pests
Now ur always talking about Jean’s, there’s 15 pair of blue Jean’s on the 200 level, that’s kinda messed up but at 100k a pair, that’s 1.5m dollars on the 200 level, u can say oh man ur messed up for thinking this way, but……. jeans