Panning for Gold, Silver & Copper: For over 150 years the trusty Gold Pan has been the Prospector’s pride. Your mine tour includes panning for gold and other precious metals in the Old Hundred Sluice Box at no extra charge! Still a “greenhorn”? Ask your miner-guide for a quick lesson. Kids love it!
Single Jacking the Steel: Before the perfection of air powered rock drills in the early 1900’s, dynamite holes were drilled by hand! Hit, turn, hit, turn …was the “song” of the hammer and drill throughout the San Juans deep in the mines. It took a steady hand to wield the 8 pound “single-jack” hamme
Mucking Machine: Muck is what the miner calls the ore and loading those ore cars by hand was backbreaking work - until the 1930’s when the Eimco-Findley air powered mucking machine was invented. The self powered machine scoops up 400 pounds in an instant and flings it back into the ore car! It was t
Old Hundred Boarding House: Built in 1904, standing 2,000 feet above the mine portal on Galena Mountain. Once forty men and a cook lived in the three story structure, cabled to the rock wall so it wouldn't fall off! To get to the bunkhouse the miners rode a steep aerial tramline, riding buckets up
Hand Crank Lyner Drill: Drilling the holes in solid rock for the dynamite was tiring work. When air-powered machine drill first came out, they made som much dust the miners got sick. But Denver’s George Lyner put a hole in the steel to squirt water into the hole making mud – not dust! Mining became
Fire in the Hole!: Nitroglycerin based “dynamite” replaced gunpowder in the late 1890’s for blasting ore and was used until the 1970’s when safer explosives were developed. Here Ernie shows how sticks of dynamite were tamped into the drill holes with the blasting cap fuses dangling out of the hole
Ride the Mine Tram: Your trip into the heart of 13,240 foot Galena Mountain begins with a ride on an original battery-powered mine tram. This car was originally built for Ouray’s famous Campbird Mine! All our equipment is authentic from the San Juans and Colorado built between 1947 and 1965.
Slushing the Muck: Moving what the miners called “muck” was a backbreaking job hundreds of feet underground. Hundreds of tons had to be moved each day. This “slusher” – an air-powered scraper drags the ore along the floor of the tunnel until it drops down a hole into an ore car on the level below.
