[Music]
Hello there. Welcome to Globe, Arizona.
On today's adventure I wanted to come check
out a free public park -
the Old Dominion Historic Mine Park.
It's supposed to have some really neat relics
from the mining past and some historical stuff
spread out in kind of a boneyard.
As well some other potential structures and
trails to explore so I thought it was
worthy to come check it out.
So if you want to find out what it's like,
let's go see together.
I think it's an old copper mine if I'm not mistaken.
This was the largest copper mine in this area
and it lasted for over 50 years.
The people of the town here
wanted to preserve the mining history
and that's why this part was created.
To preserve that. I think that's amazing.
This is free. There's no fee to come in here.
It's open sunrise to sunset.
You can come and go as you please anytime.
So here is a map.
You've got multiple hiking trails you can see.
Ooh, the slime trail. That sounds awesome.
This is one of the things that I've come to see,
the mining artifacts over here.
This is always a fun thing to see.
So I guess as a news reporter for you...
looks like they're gonna be closing off some of the trails
starting on February 29th.
I guess that means when you come to visit
I can't guarantee you that
everything's gonna be open. All the trails.
But today they are.
Now they do have restrooms and drinkable water here,
but as the sign at the entry said, this is it.
This is the only restroom and water
so if you need either thing be sure to
take care of that before you head on off.
There's a sign here that says Old Dominion's smelter.
And here we have,
I assume, the remnants of the smelter.
Looks like a giant kind of bucket like thing.
I could imagine hot ore pouring into this ladle.
I could be totally wrong about that folks,
but that's the vision I have in my head.
I've probably seen one too many movies.
The remnants of an old building here.
I assume part of the area where the smelting occurred.
Here's what we're looking at actually.
The smelter flue and dust chamber
with a 200-foot stack which I assume the
stack is no longer here.
But look at that.
Another view of that smelter and
where the stack used to be.
I'm going to give kudos to this town.
I mean this is really educational,
interesting and awesome.
So right on.
[Music]
This sign here has a picture from 1916
of the payroll office which I'm assuming
would have been right in front of us here.
This sign indicates the general office
and you can actually see old stairs here
as well as an old gate or fence here.
Now I'm gonna assume this is the foundation
for what they dubbed the general office
here right in front of me.
Some old pipes I assume.
Could be from old plumbing?
I'm gonna kind of come in here.
It looks like there used to be a door right here.
Really cool.
You can even see the remnants of a pipe here
in the wall.
Here's an old ore cart.
I'm assuming these were actually used here
at this mine.
[metal knocking noise]
Ah! Here we go. Here's a sign.
Left to right, you got a side dump ore cart.
I'm assuming that's this guy here.
Here you've got an ore bucket.
I assume they put ore in this guy
and lifted it up out of the mine.
Another style of ore bucket here.
It says it was used in Incline shafts.
Look at that. You can actually still
rotate that. It's not as heavy as you think.
It's got some weight to it. Don't get me wrong.
This sign talks about slag which is basically
the byproduct of a smelting process.
It's iron silicate.
So it's waste material and it's this black
stuff that you saw in the parking lot and all over here.
This is all the waste created from smelting copper.
It looks like they even have a disc golf
course out here at the park.
You got your scoring, your pars, all that here
and a map of where all the different poles are.
That is so cool.
I guess this is hole one. It's a par 5.
859 feet.
I'm guessing...
I've never played disc golf
before so I'm guessing the destination
is out there somewhere.
[Music]
So it looks like right here behind me is
the boneyard as they call it here.
This is probably one of the main draws.
It's one of the things I was most interested
in seeing here today.
It's a bunch of equipment,
old equipment, back from the mining past.
So yeah, let's get into this.
I'm honestly not sure what all of this
stuff is like this materials platform.
I don't really have any information handy
to educate myself on that but pretty cool regardless.
I don't know why one of my favorite things
always are ore carts.
This is a wooden ore cart.
Just look how old that is.
It looks like this one was used for hauling dynamite.
[Music]
So I can say this.
I did read that they had a boneyard
of old equipment here.
I didn't know what it looked like.
I didn't seek out any pictures or videos
before coming here and I would say this
actually is more impressive than I
actually thought it was going to be.
It's actually really cool.
Now the last thing that I really want to try to seek out,
and I didn't do research on it, is
up on the top of that hill.
I think I saw someone up there
and I think I saw trails.
I think that's part of the old mining operation up there.
Let's go see if we can get up there get a closer look.
There is a trail over here.
I don't know if we're not supposed to go this way.
There's nothing saying not to.
There's a good view of the boneyard from
up above here up on this hill.
So they're talking about ventilation and mine shafts
and it shows us standing right here.
This is a cross-section of the mine
and this is underneath us here.
Some of these things go down like 2,000 feet.
That is crazy.
To think that's all below ground
right where I'm standing.
So this says basically that the large
metal structure here is a fan that sits
on top of the shaft - Shaft C.
I'm guessing it's going to be this guy here. This shaft.
That's the fan if I'm not mistaken.
I'm assuming this is fenced off because
there's a 2,000 foot tunnel
somewhere down here below that.
You can walk around it though and get a good look.
I don't know if those things open up.
See what looks like hatches, maybe?
I ran into a woman walking her dog just now
and I asked "can we get up there?"
and she said "Yes."
She said to go back
kind of towards the front again and
there's a trail that should take us up there.
Looks like the remnants of some kind of building here.
Right over here there's something pretty cool.
I have no idea what it is but I do see a sign.
It's a little bridge over here.
Okay, so these are called concentrator bins.
This is where ore was deposited after
being processed in the concentrator.
You can kind of get a view in there.
It's a little hard to see.
Right here
was the old-time waterslide
where the miners had a little bit of fun.
I am kidding.
I don't know what that is.
Probably some kind of drainage.
It looks like they marked where old buildings used to sit.
There used to be a blacksmith shop here.
Not even a trace anymore of what was once here.
Here's an old photo of some structures that
once were here.
We're here.
There's where the blacksmith shop
would have been where I was looking at that sign.
There's all sorts of buildings that
would have been here.
There's one other really cool note...
there's a fountain that you may notice here at the
center of the park in this picture.
This says the concrete piece to my right is
believed to be the base of the fountain shown above.
[Music]
Here is an old foundation of the supply house
and other rusty bits left around here.
You can see the supply house
is a pretty lengthy structure.
It starts way over there and continues down here.
You can actually see in this picture
here's the supply house
in this region of the photo.
There's another set of stairs
up here and beyond it you can see
another cement foundation.
There's no science saying what that was
but clearly there is a building here at some point.
I wonder if that was the front door.
Oh yeah. Here's a sign. It just says residence.
I wonder if these were just people's houses
that lived on the premises here.
You do kind of have to use your imagination a bit.
Clearly all that remains of most of these things
are just the concrete foundations
but I find that to be so cool.
I love that kind of stuff.
This is from a 1937 postcard
of what this area looked like.
All of those structures.
Now you remember the supply house...
that really lengthy concrete foundation
and the assay office,
general office, even the 200 foot
stack that we saw in the beginning...
This is what the place actually looked like
and this is what it looks like today.
You see that big concrete
foundation down there?
That was the supply house we saw
in the picture. Kind of in the foreground.
[Music]
Well, unfortunately going this way...
this is gated off and marked as private property.
Now I'm starting to wonder
as we saw when we first entered a lot of
the trails are going to be closed
starting February 29th...
is it possible that they've sold
part of this property maybe to a new
mining operation or something like that
and that's why all this stuff is closed?
I honestly don't know.
So if you're watching this and you
have information about this...
Let me know. Let me know why
some of those things don't seem to be accessible and
let me know why they're closing off some of the trails.
Here's a really nicely formed structure.
This was the mine office
with a vault in the middle.
Maybe they kept bullion or some other kind of valuable
metals in the middle I'm guessing.
Here's another really good view of the vaults.
[Music]
I really wish you could get in there
and take a closer look.
You'll see a lot of signs saying that
these structures are off-limits because it
could be unstable.
There's some evidence for you right there.
Look that floor looks like it's
completely caved in.
That's solid concrete too.
[Music]
This is dubbed the sampling mill.
It's kind of hard to see in there
with this big grate here.
Here's another one.
You can see what I'm assuming or some kind of nests.
I'm gonna guess birds nests
based on the size of the holes.
Not wasp nests.
You never know.
There's a really nice perspective of that mine building.
And there's another perspective of...
I forget the name of the building already.
I had another adventure planned for today.
I didn't bring my phone with me.
I think I left it in my car so I don't
know exactly what time it is but it's
pretty clear to me that I'm not gonna
have time for that.
The point being that this place is amazing.
This is so fun to explore.
This has exceeded all of my expectations today.
This is all off limits.
You can get a good view, I guess,
of that whatever that is.
I'm guessing the mine.
Is that a head frame?
I believe that might be a head frame.
There's a sign here saying conveyor connector trail.
I see footprints of people's dogs
so I'm guessing we can walk this way.
So why the heck not? Why stop now, right?
You get a good view through the fence here
of that structure.
You could really hear the hum
of that 22,000 volts right there.
[Electric buzzing]
There's a little bridge here.
A little footbridge so
I am now more confident that I'm not trespassing or
doing something bad.
Here's some really old
stone walls or retention wall perhaps.
If you just keep an eye out you'll
see really cool things like that.
Those are shovels from an age long past.
Then another view of that
what I'm guessing is a head frame.
That's what I'm gonna call it
for the time being until
I see otherwise.
Here's what I was looking for.
Something to confirm
that's that thing that I was calling a head
frame and I am assuming it is.
It says the Old Dominion Mineshaft.
System extends for three miles.
So yeah.
That is the mineshaft. Where it would be located.
Alright. The shadows are getting very long.
The day is winding to an end.
I underestimated how much there was to do and see here
and it was fantastic.
A couple pro tips for you...
The place is pet-friendly.
I see plenty of people walking their dogs.
It's absolutely free.
It will not cost you a penny which is amazing.
It's open sunrise to sunset.
You can come and go as you please
The biggest tip I'm going to give you is
bring a map of the trails or the very least
snap a photo with your phone,
before you head out, of the map they have
up by the parking lot.
I didn't do that and there's lots of nooks and
crannies and I may have missed something
really cool because of that.
You'll be really happy if you do that.
Other than that all I gotta say is this place
absolutely rocks and yeah pun intended.
If you enjoyed this episode and want to
support the Cactus Atlas, please like,
share and subscribe.
It's completely free to do so.
Also look us up on social media
at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
under the name Cactus Atlas.
[Music]