Goldfield Ghost Town

Yesterday was Memorial Day, and our friends the Campbell's wanted to go check out Goldfield Ghost Town in Apache Junction. We've never been and it sounded like a fun way to spend the day!

Here is a panoramic view of the town. Back in the 1890's this town was booming!! This mine was the richest gold producing mine in the nation in it's day. And the town reached 1,500 in population!! The mine was successful for 5 years until the the area was hit with a major Monsoon and the mine flooded. There were several unsuccessful attempts to reopen the mine, until the acting governor George Young brought in new mining methods and equipment. The town flourished again for another 5 years until one day they hit an aquifer and the mine flooded again...to this day it is still underwater! We were told they pulled out a total of 6.2 tons of gold in all!!!

These Wild West Buckaroos can't wait to strike it rich! :)

Maybe one of these jailbirds will sing like a canary!! LOL!

They had a little museum you could walk through for just a few dollars. They had all sorts of mining objects and history you could read about. They also had biographies about several popular miners in the area. It gave you a pretty good idea of how they lived their day to day life.

A favorite past time! They didn't have television back then!! LOL!

We thought this was a pretty cool find!

Who doesn't love Doc Holiday?? :)

I've been dying to take the kids down to Tombstone for the past year or so. Seeing this really made me want to go soon. Maybe we can head down in a couple of weeks!! :)

It was a really nice day out but it's always nice to cool down a bit with some ice cold slushies! :D

We took a tour of the mine. It's not the actual mine..as stated above it's under water..but it's a nice little re-creation to give you an idea of what conditions these men were exposed to day in and day out. We were told they were given 1 gallon of water and 3 candles for a 12 hour shift. If either one ran out before the end of their shift they did without. They had an hour for lunch but since light was such a commodity they ate in pitch black!

He also told a story of a man who was caved-in in the mine twice. On his second cave-in he was down there for 13 days!! All he had with him was his gallon of water and his 3 candles. He went in weighing 150lbs. and came out weighing 90lbs! That is a 60lb loss!!!! He survived by rationing his water and eating his candles. Back then candles weren't made out of beeswax (which you should not eat) they were made out of tallow which is basically animal fat. After that he retired from mining and moved to England. He was there about a week or two and then he was shot to death....crazy!!

Next we headed over to the train!

It's a 36 gauge train that takes you around a mile and half loop. It was a bit slow and the narrator was definitely ready for his shift to be over. There was zero enthusiasm..LOL! Eli said he really enjoyed it though! :)