Passage, Surprise, What the Hell?

 Welcome to  another trip back in time. Yesterdays trip was to Ophir Utah located in Tooele County. Years ago, it had the recognition of being Utah's smallest town. It probably still is, but without having a mayor, it became unincorporated Tooele County. After the last mayor retired, no one wanted the job so it is now governed by the county. I do have to apologize, these fotos are from my archives. The half cab top doesn't allow easy access to the storage and I really didn't plan to write about this trip. I shall explain why in a few. The foto above shows the ore dump for a mine located 2000' up the mountain. The workers went in thru the tunnel here in town and took the ore elevators up to the actual mine. 

 The foto above is what is left of an old passenger train car. Time is taking it's toll on the poor thing and as of yesterday, it has pretty much collapsed into a pile of wood. What made me change my mind about writing was a sort of discovery of truth, for lack of a better phrase. Some of the properties have actual mines in their yards. For years I have watched an owner, who owns a lot in town, decorate his place around what I thought was a mine entrance. His property is mostly solid mountain. It is maybe 25 feet from the edge of the road to  a solid rock mountain with what looks like a mine.  

 As we were coming down from playing in a snow storm, we noticed that the cable was not hooked up and other people were walking around the property. We stopped and talked with this young couple for a few minutes to see if it was theirs. It wasn't. They were just curious too. They were looking for ghosts, literally. We began a conversation on graveyards in the area and where they were located. They moved on and we explored this interesting property. The foto above shows how upper management works.... 

 The owner has been decorating for Halloween and it was kinda fun to walk through. We headed to what appeared to be his mine entrance, stuck our heads past the decorations and literally hit a wall of rock. It seems our owner has made a fake mine entrance on his property. What the hell???? Here I have thought all these years that here was a mine a guy had in his back yard. How cool would that have been? But, apparently, it is just a decoration. So disappointed. We looked around further and then I saw something that surprised me.   

To the right of this fake mine is a brick wall. It is bigger than the fake mine and looking how it formed itself to the mountain, I believe he did have a mine entrance and he sealed it up. I'll never know for sure until I get lucky enough to meet the owner some future visit. I can understand why he sealed it.The first would be safety. Open mine are often tempting places to visit, and he didn't want any liability. The 2nd reason is a guess. I have read that some of the mines in Ophir had bad air in them. Unless you are carrying an oxygen meter, there would be a high chance of death. Remind me to get a detector. Snow is falling early this year. Not a lot of mountain visits left for they all become impassable. That's ok tho, We still have the desert to explore. Jeep on my friends!