This installment has been very special. In the 70's I owned a sawmill operation that consisted of equipment built in the early 1900s. As you walked toward the mill site you were following what was referred to as a corduroy road constructed with layers of neatly set slab wood from the milling process. One thing I noticed on some of the machinery was a spattering of babbit material that tells me there had to have been a serious fire at one point. You passed several specialty planers 2 and 4 sided and then a "Tower" edger which would have had multiple adjustible blades. I'm pretty sure what appeared to be small water turbines may have been saw dust blowers and some of the scrap I saw looked like the housings for them. You pointed to what you said was a transmission and that was correct, but it was a planetary transmission still connected to a partially buried Model T engine. This may have been the power for your insane go-cart with turntable on the back. What a great video. It was a walk down memory lane. Thank you.
What you said Ken was so interesting! It makes me wanna go there and explore I’m supposed to have some Mexico in the next year I’ve had enough of the United States
I currently work in a sawmill in BC that was built 50 years ago and as he walked through I almost could envision the route the wood would have travelled, after the band saw, I didn’t see a cut off saw though. Those planetary gears are still used in modern mills just have design improvements. This is really really cool site,
On the Oregon coast in the 1960's we kids would go adventuring through the woods. We found many steam Donkeys and cable for yarding the logs up the mountain sides. Those were back in the days when they were logging old growth still. I knew a logger that was a faller up until he was 55. He was an expert old growth logger. He had to retire when he broke both legs logging. I think he was born in Montana in 1918. He was a cowboy when he was young and would sing all the old cowboy songs when he thought no one was listening. He would hop on freight trains to go into town now and then when he was a kid living in Montana. He didn't keep any pictures of his family in his wallet. But he kept a picture of a horse he had in Montana that saved his life in a white out blizzard. He was in WWII and spent 2 years sleeping on the ground fighting in France against the nazis. He was part High Plains Apache. He was one of my heroes growing up. I am glad I got to grow up around men like that.
I love story like urs. I’ve been thinking of writing shorts stories as there are just so many out there. If one day you’d like to share some. Just reply to me here. Again great story. I’m an Aussie. Plus I had read a bit about this place. That’s why I’m here. God Bless 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🇦🇺
Thank you for sharing. The world shouldn't forget characters like you hero. Sounds like he was larger than life. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Hey Dustin, Jeff and Rose and the girls here. My Grandad grew up in Georgetown. His Great Uncle was mill manager for many years. We've got a few stories and pictures from his time there. His fishing boat actually burned and sank anchored in the bay right out in front. We've been wishing we could visit for years and your adventure has only encouraged us. Maybe 2022 is the year. Thanks for taking us along.
The vehicle is a "doodle bug" a cut down, modified truck in my neck of the woods. Used by my grandfather/ loggers to haul or skid trees in the 40's or later here.
That one was a model TT truck. That "gearbox" you found was the original motor and transmission for it. It had a worm gear drive so it was a TT. Definitely a neat cut down TT
That thing with the steering wheel, that would today be called a skidder. It was used to haul trees on that fork in the back. You lifted just on end of the trees and pulled them along. The snow chains on it were not because of snow but mud. Judging by the transmission it was powered by a Ford A engine. Probably built around 1920.
I am so happy to see all the thumbs ups on this comment because that means folks watched to the end :). When I was the yacht I immediately had to go and make the joke lol. Hopefully they didn’t hear me. I could see they were out on the deck eating peanut butter and jealous sandwiches when I cruised by ;)
Thats great to see. My grandfather grew up there as his Dad was the mill manager. He had some good stories and I've always wanted to go there. That was about 1895 to 1910. Ish. Cheers
@@annetterichards4072 I just remember him saying how he'd catch crab salmon and sometimes halibut from a rowboat. He was a rabid fisherman. The mill people would sometimes come and get him from the school to crawl in some pipes to clear them of obstructions as he was the only one small enough yet still willing to do it. Said it was a great time to be a boy. Tough times yet a good clean and simple life.
What a fascinating place! These are the type of sites I love! Where mother nature takes over the industrial World. It’s so amazing how well machines were once built. All the past machine builders of this era were proud of their work and knew it would outlast them.
I recall flying over Georgetown heading north many times during the late 70;s and early 80s and when flying over there was an old recon aircraft which had crashed during the war and the floats were still attached.
According to a historical salvage project, the mill was destroyed by fire in 1978. A detailed study conducted the year before documented the site. Plus, the owner had moved some of the machinery to a different mill prior to the fire for a museum.
journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17087/22916 I was just reading that report also about the site. Some neat photographs showing how things were. Should like they had thought of preserving it before the fire because of its age.
How convient, good planning on the timing. My GrandMother watched as the guy that owned the hay barn just down from her house on Turtle Creek, went into it to check on it. The local crick was backing up and flooding all the lowland and it was only a matter of time before the barn was flooded and hay lost. When he left he saw her watching him and as he went by he slipped her $10 and asked if she'd seen him. She said no and later a fire broke out and the hay and barn were lost. When the insurance investigator came by, he asked if she'd seen anyone around the barn. She hadn't ...
your sense of humor and your positive energy is exactly what I needed to get me through this day. Thank you man! Never met, but it feels like im exploring a new place with a life long friend. Hard magic to pull of and youve done it perfect.
@@cdd4248 ❤🤟🏼this whole thing called life is too beautiful a trip. On my bad days..instead of being angry at the world and life, it always helps to remind myself of the good in people, and of the good they do for me, see someone explore the nature i see only in dreams, 1 good video reminds me of why im here, so the least i can do, is send kind words to those who help. Today it is considered weak and naive to show strangers a meaningful kindness, especially where im from in the bible belt. Jesus is good, just some people use the word rather than embrace it. Peace and love friend. God bless you and those you care for!
@@9FisterSpit9 bible belt, as you mean in the Netherlands? Me too like this way of exporing the world, made possible by people filming "destination exploring" BaiG thanxs greeting from Hengelo Holland
Those people are right. Theres nothing useful there for practicle folks. Working people. Only ruins to interest a RU-vid Gen Z kid with a silly but trendy beard, and money. Just junk.
What's most interesting about this site is how nature consumed all of the structures and is now slowly consuming/burying the machines. In a century, it might be as if Georgetown Mills never existed. Considering the efforts put into keeping such a place running, it's just another reminder of how ephemeral Human endeavors can be. I appreciated your sharing the history of this place as you explored it. Thanks for sharing this. :)
"I explored as much as I could here in one day, but you could easily spend days exploring and finding things in the forest. " EXACTLY. There should be a Part-2 to this adventure. What else is in that forest?
yes most definitely, this time pan in on relics a little longer, it's like being teased with just a glimpse and I feel cheated 😊 then your viewers can offer their knowledge of what's the item is, some viewers here already have done, thanks viewers, that one larger piece looked like a plainer, anyway, again great stuff, 👍👏,
As a young boy I used to crap in that forest but always forgot to bring toilet paper. I used my socks to wipe my butt so if you find any socks they are probably mine.
5:13... it's a lobby safe (for payroll / production, most likely.) . The original deterrent was to keep you from running off with it because it was so heavy! A friend of mine has a smaller one and we bent the boom on a two and a half ton engine hoist lifting it in and out of a 3/4 ton pickup. That one that you saw is easily three times as big as hers!
This channel is incredibly underrated. I started watching The Why Files when it was about the level of subs Dustin has now, and look at it now! Fingers Crossed that Destination Adventure makes the same meteoric rise. Truly deserved. A good soul.
Tid bit from a guy who has hunted the bush of BC for decades. It's real easy to get a stick poke in the eye as you push through the bush. Especially as the gloom of evening sets in. And under the canopy it's even gloomier. In the low resolution gray of dusk you wont even see the stick that jams your orb. I've taken to wearing polycarb safety glasses in bush walks. No tint. Your call of course, I'm no Karen.
Second that. I almost lost an eye on a quad once, but for an inch. Sticks are harder than you. Eye protection and bushwhacking go together well. It's funny how much safety advice Dustin gets though, he's got his own workplace safety commission here!
I had a broken off sharp and pointy stick jab my eye last winter as I ventured through the snow. It bled so much I was afraid id go blind in that eye lol. I was fine in about a week but eyeyeye, no pun intended.
@@bane8305 the underground leper colony always comes up to feed at night. Popcorn slows them down when being chased untill you trip over a gear pulley.
Love your work Dustin , I'm so glad I found this footage. I would have taken a tent and enough supplies to stay there a few days and explore as much as possible. It fascinates me how resourceful people were back then and they probably never took the time to admire the beauty of their surroundings. Thank you for your dedication in following through , blessings from Melbourne Australia.
If I knew what the location and landing site was like, I think I would have packed up some gear and stayed. Amazing place. Thanks for enjoying the show.
The part at the end where you talk about having the “nicest boat in Prince Rupert”, while passing a luxury yacht was impeccable timing! 🤣. It IS a pretty nice boat, though.
Please please please....dude I love that you wrap your adventures in history and I wanna watch more so PLEASE wear a life jacket that'll flip you onto you back should you go flying out of that boat! One piece of driftwood could send you flying into one of those Rocks! A human head doesnt fare very well with granite. A old school Bright Orange life preserver will flip a human being onto their back. You are by yourself so please do this! Love your channel!
Also the wrist attached auto-kill switch. I didn't have one on my old Zodiac semi rigid hull like yours. I never did get thrown from it, but you never know.
New to your channel Dustin- the old ‘ore car’ looks like it might have been a railway office safe, especially given the mechanism inside. They were often not do heavy as their stationary bank type brothers as the value kept was not as much. Mostly record books tickets stamps and petty cash and they had to be hauled into remote areas by cargo steamer charging by the pound.. great video and catching up to your newer ones !
I went through George Town lake by kayak and hiked for three hours or so and was worth it back in 2016 with my high school class. Seeing the twin waterfalls was amazing
That "tractor" has a cut down ford model "TT" truck worm drive rear end. Just prior to that you walked over a Ford model "T" engine/transmission. That was the three pedals.
The "gear-box out'a somethin here" @ 19:54 appears to be a Model-T Ford planetary transmission assembly, possibly still attached to the motor which would be forward of it and sunk into the ground or junk heap. The vehicle looks like just some sort of site-specific, cobbled together "doodle-bug" sort of contraption that ended its life there in the junk heap many decades ago.
i love stumbling upon old civil war walls/defenses. just as sturdy as when they were built, by brave young men more than a hundred years ago. i would have been one of those boys...
Well that boat is going to help you grow your channel to a million views with discoveries like that. Very interesting place, lots of sawmill equipment there, too bad you didn't have the drone to get the overlay of the place, still thanks for all the effort to show us this hiding spot. The coast is full of them.
How fantastic!! I found you by accident just scrolling through and this is the kind of place I would love to explore or stay for a while. Thank you for sharing 🦋
I fell in love with that area years ago. IMHO British Columbia and Alaska are the most beautiful places on this planet. Prince Rupert stole my heart too. I was hoping to get back up there last year, but of course the powers that be had other plans for the world it seems. Maybe someday.
I'm still catching up and I already have it pinned on the map. What a cool place!! Not much to see?? Really?? I am still trying to imagine just how big it was. Thanks for the tour Dustin!!
Lax Kw’Alaams is my hometown. I’ve never explored the Georgetown mills though. Thanks for this! My grandpa use work there, he would have to walk from Lax Kw’Alaams to the lake every day for work.
20:45 "...anyone has information on this thing...": Looks like a homemade log dragger. May have been built on a Model T chassis (looking at the controls on the steering wheel).
The doom buggy looking car you wanted to know what it was it pushes ore cars into place on the rails. And if you look on the back of it, it used chains to flip the ore cars around. I live by a railroad when I was a kid, they made all kinds of contraptions to make work easier.
@17:30 that equipment came from Greenville, Michigan where there was also a large lumber industry during the late 19th century. I grew up near that. Interesting that it made it to BC.
This is close to my home of Lax Kw'alaams, you should go and visit and talk to the elders about Georgetown. They will know the history more then anyone else. I can't wait to go home and explore here, it is one of the places I haven't gone. Thank you for the adventure ♡ My mom said when they were young they would go there and ride the rail cars.
steampunk paradise !!! thanx so much love hiking and finding old rusted stuff ,man the amount of wheels and gears is awesome ,could imagine being shipwrecked there and just building the coolest sheltered living space ... mahalo
The plants at the homesite area, just WOW! Large deep green leaves growing up out of the ground. Nature is amazing!!😍 Would love to have one as an indoor houseplant .
You live an amazing life my friend. Thank you for creating an educational exploration channel that I can sit down and enjoy with my kids. Every episode is so well planned and shot, as well as informational. Keep it up!
Thanks for the great tour! Very cool! Had to laugh at your foot pump, I had one for camping! My foot & leg would get very tired nothing compared to your boat!
Beauty bahd. As I kid I'd dig around in the nearby countryside ditches and find old medicine bottles, kitchen glass they used to dump in rock fences pulled from field rocks. I know the excitement feeling of finding stuff from a hundred plus years ago and trying to imagine what it was used for.
As a non-swimmer I would be panicking in that boat. So happy it works for your travels! I love learning the history of the various places. There’s so much thaat an be learned. I see $ in scrap. Metal..lol…. Lovely waterfall…. Thank you for telling us the history.
another great adventure! Thank you for the time and love you put into your trips. I feel like I'm seeing parts of BC that I wouldn't otherwise get to see. Honestly wish I was capable of tagging along! Oh, and the ore cart, I think maybe it was a safe? I was thinking that even before I read the comments, seems like a few people think the same thing. Anyway, thanks again for sharing.
That chain "melted" into the spool was pretty cool. I would like to have seen more detail of the machinery, but i know most people would have been bored with that!
How wonderful is it that men are allowed to get rich off the natural resources, & then allowed to abandon the site, leaving all this pollution rotting in the wilderness. The oil slick was noticed at 19:25. Nice!
🤣🤣💝💝 From Angele and Ronald: Love your videos. Informative. Beautiful. Nature. Great story telling. Perfect images. And don't forget.....funneeeee! 🤣🤣💝💝
Wow!! Such a great trip and Awesome Vid Footage of the whole exploration on the island. Thanks for sharing it with us and please continue to travel safely; its a sure bet we all want to see more. Have to check out those Dunlop Boots of yours, thanks for mentioning them.
So metal wheels thst are flat are for belts. There would've been hundreds there. Every tool had 1. Anything thats on rails will have a flange on the wheel. The buggy is a homemade log puller. From a model A maybe. Amazing place. Great video.
Fantastic video Dustin, I spent summers growing up at Brown,s mill, the twin to Georgetown, loved it, hopefully you could do a video on it, Brown,s mill was way before Georgetown, was a water driven mill started by Jim Donaldson,s mother and stepfather, so interesting, thank you for all of your wonderful video,s, try never to miss one, just love your new boat and motor, real beauty.
You might send your video to Vancouver Museum For people that say " Don't go there nothing left there those are the people who don't see the sense in historical value.The land back in the 1800's would have been $5.00 just an amazing trip you've had, wish I was there, grateful for your video's. Wow! As you pass the Yacht, your humor is wonderful!
All that old equipment just makes me think of the countless lives spent making it all, hauling it there, then maintaining and operating it. Here it slowly rots. A reminder from when we all had a hell of a lot more backbone like the stuff we were making.
Perfect opportunity to have camped, at least for a night and have more time to explore. Weather permitting of course. Pretty cool. You just earned a new subscriber from the States.
Most groovy Man! Wishin I was young enough to do that kind of solo exploring. But at least I can still sit here smokin my pipe watchin you young folks. Thanks for taking me along. Be safe and have a blast man!
It is easy to see the layout of the edger that cuts boards out of slabs from the head saw. You followed a trough up from the edger and found the head saw. Logs were drug to the head saw and first cuts of wayne wood were pushed out of the way and burned. The little chained tire axled vehicle was probably diesel and carried one end of the logs doesn’t to the head saw. The front looked like a pusher, similar to a forklift. The rails and wheels by the edger was a transfer table that had chains going along the wheels and rails to move the slabs into position into the edger. Pretty cool stuff. With experience, you can deductively reason the process. Nice to see the water operated equipment when it was mostly steam operated back then
Another totally amazing location and the history to go along with it. Like so many of the sites you explore there is so much of this countries history locked up in them rarely seen by anyone. But then again probably best that way keeps a site like this from being ravaged by the spray paint decorators, looters and others. I hope you consider a return trip at some point. Another A+.
At 21:00 I think you found a logging truck looks like a bunk behind the cab chains on the end to secure the load and swivel point in the center to enable turning .....and if you can find the garbage dump you'll likely find all kinds of neat things and stuff .... we used to explore a lot of old sites when weather or breakdowns prevented work heli-logging.... always had a 50 ft line to secure our boat to a tree or rock to prevent losing it a high tide
very cool place, thank you for taking us. I would just like to note that all that electrical items left there is making the illegal copper thieves to have heart palpitations when they see this. Distance from the mainland is the saving grace for this place.
Just stumbled across your channel, what an amazing place, what an amazing channel! Just scrolling through your videos I have a lot to watch, and I can’t wait!
What a great place to explore. I'd have to start where the loggs got pulled up the ramp. Then: walked through with my imagination to reassemble⁰.xd$=' things in my head. Still photos of the manufacturers plates and patent dates that makes identifying the equipment easier. I love this video and subbed awesome content.
Most of the big machinery came from S.A. Woods Machine Co. out of Boston, Massachusetts. They were one of the best makers of wood working machinery in the world at the time. This mill probably had a bunch of different saws and planers among other things from them.
