The Uncle Sam Mine: Revisited (Mine, Site Survey, and Additional Thoughts) 

When I was a young fellow in the 1960's this nation was covered with fallen structures and lost villages such as you are documenting. We didn't have the technology to "save" our discoveries as you do now. Too bad so much of what I saw is gone presently and I'm thankful your team is recording the remnant. Please continue your efforts and thank you for taking us along.

The car is most definitely, a 1929 ford fordor. The placement of the spotlights on the cowl, the shape of the dash, the style lines around the rear quarter window, the placement of the door hinges and the bumpers inside the car give it away. Ford used wood in their bodies until the mid 1930's. The transmission bellhousing laying in front of the car looks to be from a 1928-1932 ford 3 speed. The luggage rack on the rear appears to be an aftermarket add on. Wonderful video and discovery!

I would posit that building 2 was probably the mine office with the requisite shelving for office paperwork, books, etc. Building 3, as you stated, was probably a kitchen/mess hall for the miners. I believe that building 4 was probably a two-story sleeping accommodation. That would account for the terra cotta plumbing, electric light switch and screen doors. The outhouse being close by almost proves this point. Buildings 1 and 5 may have been storage buildings for mining supplies. There must have been a Delco plant there somewhere nearby if they had electricity. That would have necessitated gasoline storage. Also, there must have been some sort of water treatment facility if the water in the creek was not potable. The car, of 1930 vintage would certainly not have been disassembled to that extent by nature. I suspect that it was not abandoned as a relatively new car in the 1930s. Even if it only lasted five or ten years before abandonment, that would push the last date of people being there to the late 1930s or beyond. It may have been years or even decades later before that car was stripped that thoroughly. There are too many parts missing from it, even if they are scattered nearby for that to have been done through natural disintegration - especially in such a dry climate. That was done by humans turning a wrench - maybe a long time after that car was left there.

So funny. I walk through there every day to work.😆 You mentioned that there was an engine nearby and it should have some serial numbers on it that may give us old car aficionados a precise key as to the make and model, and for future reference please feel free to film as many rusty cars and parts as possible since some of us really enjoy looking at and identifying them.🧐

As a Nevadan who's now living on the other side of the planet, thanks. Made me homesick for the desert. And truth be told brought back memories. No, I didn't walk through that canyon, but growing up in Carson meant that old remains were very close by.

it's nice to hear how mindful you are of your audience, but personally as someone who knows almost nothing about ghost towns, i really enjoyed seeing this extended cut of everything you found! i can't help but imagine what this little town was like when people lived and worked there

Hey Tom and Emma, g'day from Australia! I am a steam locomotive engineman, musician and history buff from Downunder, fascinated by your videos, this one in particular. I live in the state of Victoria, also littered with gold-mining towns, some working still, most long finished. Keep up the good work, many of us out here love to see ya videos. Best, Andy

I really like it when you tell us how much redundancy you've added to ensure your safety. You've set a good model to other amateur adventurers.

It's such a shame that all the buildings were toppled over, but your documentation of the camp will help keep it from passing further into time immemorial. Thank you for sharing your adventure and for these additional clips.

I really enjoy your videos, camera and drone views ; but your commentary and ability to clearly communicate with your audience is superb. Your channel, which I discovered a few days ago has become a favourite of mine. Your coverage of the Atlantis wreck is outstanding.

Thank you for this follow up. I was actually kinda shocked after watching the first video. I expected to see the town. It was more about the journey to and from the town. Both are great videos. Thank you for making them.

What a beautiful place. Grew up in S. Cal and have always loved the west and the desert. These old towns are facinating to me. Thankyou. I hope you do more of these.

I watched the Thurmond video first a couple of weeks ago and I was instantly hooked. I'm from Norway but watching and learning about these places that time has seemingly forgotten in the U.S is fascinating and I just love ghost towns and abandoned places. Thanks for sharing and for having us along!

Thanks for following up on this super intriguing mining camp! I wonder if they were going to use the engine for some kind of power source....there’s so much timber there I’m surprised someone hasn’t constructed some kind of shelter! It would be interesting to find some kind of photograph of the camp 😃 Once again....great adventure dude 🤙

I'm so glad the last one of these went viral! If any channel deserves it, it's this one! Keep it up Tom!

Your shipwreck videos are my favorites but I like ghost towns too so you’ve got two fan bases covered. 🤣

What a fascinating video. I have seen a ghost town when my wife and I visited the US but I had no idea there were so many ruins around. We don't get this sort of thing in Wales although we do have old mines, railways and bridges from the old mining days so I would think this sort of video would be of interest to people from the UK who are interested in history. Keep it up please.

Makes me wish we could close our eyes and "see" backwards. That feeling of wonder! Explore!

You do a top notch quality in creating your video. I still like the one you did on the time lapse video from the Mizpah hotel to Monitor Valley.

Thank you for showing a map! Love your enthusiasm in this great history! Quite honored to be a subscriber!

I am glad you revisited this site my friend. Thank you for sharing.

Great follow-up video, Tom. Nice to see Alan remembering his hiking adventures and the site survey. Loved the video on the Mizpah Hotel. Cheers.

Thanks for the additional footage and commentary. The first video of yours that I watched was about Bonnie Clare. And I was thrilled. While I'm only one person, I find your ghost town videos as equally fascinating as the shipwrecks, and I sincerely hope you can do more.

This was really cool! If you ever come to Colorado to go ghost town or mine hunting, let me know, I’d go with ya! 😂

I’m one of the ones who may put off watching a shipwreck story, but ghost towns in! Just like Justin Scared in the Ollld West, I’m hooked.

I found your work today (I’m from WV and watched the Thurmond video first) and I’ve subsequent watched all of your ghost town videos since. I must say they are fascinating. You’ve got a new fan today. I’d love to see more ghost town adventures. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Thank you for adding these clips, truly enjoyed watching and getting the feel for what once was.

algorithm suggested it to me, fits my interests nicely. though im UK based most of our abandoned mines are much harder to find so im rather envious of the wilderness and ruins that side of the atlantic

Thanks for putting this additional piece out. I just finished the first one (I just found you yesterday) and it was great to be able to follow up with this one for a more complete story. Great job on your productions. I'd be surprised if you didn't get offers for work because of them.

Thanks for the follow-up. I appreciate the views of buildings etc. and their possibilities. One suggestion, the video scanning was rather quick and might be more enjoyable if it were slowed down a bit. Thanks again! Bob

You make some great videos Tom; I highly enjoy them. The one I like the most is the train wreck one about the Central New Jersey RR. I mean it’s sad that wreck happened hear me out, but it’s a reminder of why attention to detail in important in every aspect of life.

Check out Shawn Hall’s books about Nevada ghost towns and mining camps. He documents just about every single one of them, including Alum Creek and the Uncle Sam, in his publications. Great video.

You are so fortunate to get out and do this kind of thing. And we're all very fortunate that you share it! Thanks! :>)

I really love your vids. They give You the feeling that I.m there to. I also love it that you research that much. Btw I guess building number 2 would have been a store or a saloon

Great you listen to the comments I really enjoyed your last video too and just started on this one with excitement thanks

Love this Explorer. Fascinating and diverse locations and history. Emma is a lucky lady!

Fascinating Discoveries, thank you for sharing your experience 🇺🇸

There are few things about the place I find interesting. The lack on heavy equipment, they even took the old water tank. Out of most old mines like this that are so far off the main road. They usually just leave things like that behind. It looks to me they did not find that much gold and needed to sale what they could, or took it to another mine. One of the old buildings had electricity, there were pipes for water, they would have pump for that, and some kind of generator for power. The fact they took time to build all those buildings, show they were finding something in the mine to make it worth it. They must though the the mine was unsafe to have sealed it up like that. How ever someone may have sealed it up some time after the miners left. As for the car, it must of broke down when they were still mining, they could not get running so they left it. It was not worth their time or money to worry about it. Thanks for the update.

Very excellent! I normally focus on my Arctic expeditions but during Covid I started exploring and making videos of Nevada ghost towns and gold mines. This later expanded to include abandoned truck stops, motels, etc. I keep my videos to between 5-10 minutes. I recently did one on a crashed Air Force jet I found near Ely. Keep up the good work. 12:24

I find it fascinating how they transported building material to the site and then constructed the buildings in such remote and inhospitable terrain ., and its also interesting to think that the old abandoned car was once brand new in a car showroom awaiting its first owner , would be interesting to know its history and how it became abandoned in its final resting place .

I really enjoyed the videos about the Uncle Sam mine. A really long time ago when I was in my 20s I would go off the beaten path to find or look at old ghost towns. Decades later, I was able to take my daughter to some of the places I encountered, including the abandoned mines along the Million Dollar Highway between Silverton and Ouray in Colorado. She was offended as a teenager that when the silver ran out, people just up and left but such was the world. One of my excursions took me to Independence, Colorado, which is at altitude, so it is easy to wear yourself out pretty quickly (no air!) but it is a fascinating little place - not as off the beaten path as Uncle Sam, but an interesting place. There are also stagecoach/wagon wheel ruts in the rocks at the nearby Cascades south of Aspen. There are also a lot of abandoned mines in Utah, too, but like the high deserts of Nevada, you want to plan the time of year you do your exploring because Utah is at altitude in many places and between the weather changing quickly, the altitude, and the heat in the summer (or freezing cold in the spring or fall) you can get yourself into deep trouble quickly. Thank you for doing this video and for sharing your friend with us!

I like you Captain Kirk.😂 Thanks for sharing. This is the type of stuff I did when I was younger. Wish I was still able but this is the next best thing. This reminds me of the abandoned farms I found in the mountains of Randolph County WV where I hunted for many years. Between the Swiss village of Helvetia and Pickens and some barns made from hewn logs along a gas pipeline on a ridge near Charleston WV.

just wanted to say thank you for staying overnight, that was lovely and such a good trip. thank you for the detail from this video :))

I love ghost towns, you can do videos on that all the time, great video

Glad the other video did as well as it did, I truly enjoyed it and did also request you do a video on the old hotel you stayed at too :)

Absolutely fascinating i always find your RU-vid videos fascinating your my RU-vid inspiration tom lynsky

Good thing for you (and thank you), because, since nothing else had record of the site at all (for the most part), you're the one who got such record. And therefore, now we have record of the site. So, good thing for you, and thank you for that. So, anyone in the future who is trying to find record of the site, they can reference your video.

you have such an easy to listen to podcast..and really like the content..please do more exploration of out of the way places..David Paulides is my favorite channel due to his style and content..there are so many mysteries out there..and so many of us that would like an answer, or at least an intelligent discourse..peace and health ..

I greatly enjoyed the first video. Then the book arrived and was excellent, as usual. The new video makes it more clear. Thank you. The #1 building might be a shower because of the plumbing. The milled lumber might have been brought in by truck or wagon. It was a lot to haul in to a emote area. The cars motor could have been removed to power something else. They might have done this after 1930. It would be a lot to bring a new car there and then take it apart.

This entire series is outstanding. And thank you by the way. Serious heat.

Very nicely done thank you for your hard work sir 👍

The shot of electrical outlet mounted in one of the building slats really fascinated me -- a remote mining camp in the 30s seems so foreign, but that socket & mounting bracket almost could be a rusty version of a builder's grade special today

Way kuul viddy yo AND channel! ThAnx 4 taking us along.

Okay, so IF others have been through that area before you, I doff my cap to them out of respect for thier care in not leaving any traces of their presence behind for you to see. No dirt bike tracks, no horse droppings, and certainly not any litter. Jolly good explorers, I'd say. Now, regarding the suggestions for either dirt bikes or horses, I must lodge my protest. Dirt bikes would have disturbed the peace of the place both with their air poluting gas burning engines and their loud alien noise. Horses would have found the trails difficult to manuver, especially in the places where landslides had affected the area. However, a sure footed donkey or mule would have found the trails easily passable and added to the ambiance of the situation. I've only discovered your videos tonight and already I've watched three and subscribed to your chanel. I look forward to combing your archives as well as watching new ones as you produce them. PEACE

I kept thinking of the old movie, High Sierra. Thank you for this video.🌵

Appreciate the extended footage.

I’m surprised that the ghost towns don’t get as much viewership. I could listen to you talk about anything! Lol you’re just so knowledgeable and do great research and can just speak on topics with such ease. Which is also why I’m so surprised you have so many people in the comments section trying to “correct you”. That must be hard, doing all this hard work just for some bozo in the comments to try and act like they are the world’s authority on the subject. 😂 I think you’re doing great, and would have to say your trip to Catalina Island on that boat was my favorite so far. Just was so cool to see you guys have a nice time and to see Emma cook and you were so kind to the ship’s crew. You’re just good, down to earth people. Her stuffed bell peppers made me so hungry when I watched! Lol keep it up folks! Doing great! 👏🏼

In 1958 when I was in high school I bought a model A Ford sedan. I never got to drive it,but I took it all apart. The interior parts were wood. The roof was canvas nailed to a wood frame and the seats had wood frames similar to living room furniture.I found out later that Henry Ford required suppliers to make the wooden parts of shipping containers so that they could be used in the fabrication of his vehicles. I believe that my sedan was a 1928. I would also note that miners in northern California died from spring water that had arsenic in it. Arsenic leaves a dark orange deposit on the rocks.

Thanks Such a very different landscape and historical context for the masses -

👍 thanks for taking us along

Thanks for documenting all this and doing the follow up video, these places are so fascinating! Last video you mention workers might have came up from the south... did you ever see a viable route from that direction or anything leading out from the camp? There really is nothing south of there for miles and miles some of the most barren landscape in the country

Thanks for the extra footage!

Just a thought. A Mining camp. Perhaps with Speak Easy during prohibition and or a brothel-hotel like two story structure. Water from the stream could be cleaned of sulfur with chlorine within a holding tank and gravity piped in, or perhaps making use of parts cannibalized from the car.

Although probably not possible or practical, it would be great to see some of that wood re-purposed to build a structure, a small cabin perhaps to make for a hiking destination or the like. Just my .02

Excellent - thank you! Just found your channel and we're very much enjoying it - especially the ghost town explorations. Have you been to Leadfield yet? It's off Titus Canyon in Death Valley NP.

Very interesting, thanks for the follow up video. Though I do got some Fallout New Vegas vibes here, glad you didn't run into some Cazadors :)

Again. Brilliant. I will look for the hotel video. Thank you.

I'm loving these videos.

Wow!! How cool of a video. It would be interesting if some one could CG what that mini mining town would have looked like.

Very intriguing how the plumbing for Building 1 is still there. Where do you think the pipes’ water came from in that area?

Building one could have been an air compressor house based on the look of the piping. I dunno but I see things like that on Exploring Abandoned Mines channel.

I really like your videos. This one is literally close to my home. May I suggest a trip to Mt Potosi just west of Las Vegas. During WW II Carole Lombards airplane crashed into Mt Potosi and many aircraft parts are still there as it is remote and the aircraft parts can not be removed easily by scavengers. Carole Lombard as you know was Clark Gables wife and it is said that while Mr Gable was waiting for news of his wife at the nearby town of Goodsprings, he spent much of his days sitting at the Pioneer Saloon (It is still there today) drinking and smoking cigars. His cigar burns are still burned into the wood on the bar today. Unfortunately no one survived the plane crash. I have not seen a good documentary on this subject and believe you would do it well.

Very interesting and enjoyable videos. I very much like exploring old mine areas here in Montana. The trail down to the Uncle Sam would have been pretty sketchy on horseback. That is some rocky terrain and trails along with the steepness of the drop offs. I would say more of a very experienced/advanced horseback/rider trail. All the best and thanks for taking us along!

Another great video, and again, you have an opportunity to do the stuff that many of us may never get to achieve. But my main question that I've had for both videos is: did you retrieved any artifacts from this site? I don't think there's any good reason at all why something shouldn't of been taken back.

Glad you came back so much to see but what about the other road coming in .Is it all wash out .thank you ⛏️🇺🇸

As a Austrian who never left central Europe, i can confirm that i walk through that ghost thrice a day. Jokes aside, great job documenting all that for the world to see. I cant help cringe everytime i hear those structures labeled as old tough, living in a house 20 years older than the earliest buildings on your site, built from the stones of a building that had burned down two years prior, which inturn was built around 1630, after the swedes(referring to whatever protestant alligned army it was, its only recorded that it was the swedes, but there were no swedish forces where i lived)burnt down the village and the survivors decided to relocate the location of the village by half a kilometer. But thats kinda a me problem. Out of curiosity, how do you guys ho about the documentation process? Im asking as im kinda trying to do the same for the old village site and mill, and the fieldw which have been abandoned.

Although its a little more work, I feel a short edit and a long edit would reach and satisfy a larger audience. Sometime I just want to watch a topic for a few minutes, but if im interested i can watch for an hour. And you could overlay link at the start of the video to either option to help viewers watch the length of content they enjoy. Really enjoying the channel so far, looking forward to seeing more locations. Keep up the great work!

Great job really down to earth. Come out to arizona. Theres alot of history like this. Take care keep your compass close but not close to metal

Not two story..no floor joists...extremely cool none the less!

I wish you documented the auto more. You can tell the exact time if you documented the engine and other parts of the car.

That girl is a keeper. Nice job bro!

Enjoyed the original, but this was much more informative. Liked seeing the old boots and buckles.

Awesome place to explore! Thanks!

Its definitely is an older Chevrolet if not some other general motors vehicle like to Buick

The concrete foundation was probably for the mine's air compressor - that is heavy enough to require a foundation. Air is used to run the drills in the mine. I'm doubtful that the miners would blast the mine closed - that is usually a more recent effort by whatever government agency that manages the land. Also possible the adit collapsed on its own. That wooden entrance collar makes me think the rock was rather unstable.

hope ya found the dumpsite of the town should have some nice bottles and such..

Great vlog!

What were they mining? Thanks for the extra footage.

Hi Tom , Great channel . Some really interesting content. You come across as a very good host for you videos. I was wondering. Do you live in US or Canada. Kind regards Mark From UK

It is so interesting, that after 100 years nearly everything is gone from an American Town, while in Europe most of my neighbor houses are several hundred years old, and there are buildings that are more than 1000 years old and are still standing. I completely understand that it depends on the way things are built and their purpose, but you rarely find buildings that are so flimsy in Europe.

Word of mouth from people who knew areas that are now long gone is so important but sadly as people pass I say to myself I should've asked more questions.

Great video! Whereabout are you in PA?

Question possibility I do falling down building to hide stash Back at a later date for the stash

Just found your channel and love it, I do have one thought on the car. I wonder if they brought the car in with the sole purpose of using the engine for mining? I vaguely remember seeing other mining operations in the early 20th century when they used mechanical engines to mine. Likewise, I'm wondering if that was the reason why it was picked apart. I'm thinking this was a mine around the late 30's early 40's and they used a car engine to run something for the mine.

Thanks for the great content.

You should consider bringing metal detectors to these sites. Who knows what you might find especially at a site like this that seems untouched

Bit of ArmourAll would bring the car back to life

Question about the game you are working on . what is the title of the RMS lusitania game you are creating. One of my suggestions for a title would be ( Lusitania, Atlantic greyhound. or Lusitania monarch of the sea. because you have catchy titles for all of your other games, Ex: britannic patroness of the mediteranian or titanic honor and glory

Question, where do you think the 1870s stone mining camp could potentially be?

Admire and appreciate your prior work on maritime vessels and historic events …