Forbidden Universe
Paranormal => The Paranormal & Ghost Society => Topic started by: AngelOfThyCosmos on December 10, 2018, 05:59:43 PM
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Our Middle Earth Expedition Of Nightingale Nevada On 11-24-18
Nightingale is one of these small mining camps you hear very little about hidden in a mountain range not many folks ever get to journey in. I am always fascinated when exploring Nevada because I see new canyons, peaks, deserts, forest and mountain ranges on a consistent basis.The town site is in such an ancient place as it overlooks ancient dry lake Lahontan and on the other side of the lake Dry Lake Winnemucca which back in the day the Indians would fish and hunt game on this lake for thousands of years. Today Indian caves are scattered throughout the area while you traverse the dry lake beds while going up to Nightingale.
It would be a cold dreary day that we would be visiting Nightingale their are no breaks for me no matter what the weather is like we journey in all elements. I love this part of Nevada the last time we were up here was when we visited the ghost town of Jessup recently which is just on the other side of the range. Many small mining camps sprung up in the area but they were not major towns although they had your basics such as a general store, few saloons, stage stop, miner cabins, mill, various mining claims and even a post office.
Nightingale was a town that came to be in the earlier 1900's and lasted till about WWII then the operation tapered off completely by the 1950's. They mainly mined tungsten here but also gold and silver too. The area is riddled with large mines they are something worth seeing trust me if you like taking risk and they do come with plenty of risk but this trip would rock so I could not wait to go.
My focus on the trip would be to check out Nightingale which really only its mines and mill remain at least the foundations do. But also the Pershing Mine and Camp nearby and finish off our day up at the MGL Mine and Milling Camp also. They were all really part of eachother due to the close proximity and part of the same mining district. This would be a huge project despite how little remains it is the thrill of the hunt when trying to find any last remnants in regards to every ghost town we visit.
The funny thing about Nightingale is that their is a expressway exit to get off the ramp for it yet when you get off at the ramp it just leads to a series of dirt roads through an expanse surrounded by mountains. In simple terms if you thought hey their is a town here you will come to realize that sure their is a town but a ghost town 20 miles through washes, over boulders and through a dry lake bed. Their is literally nothing here for miles just big open desert. I may have been the only human in the Nightingale Mountains that day so very desolate and one hell of a long ride down various dirt roads just to get up to the town site.
I would begin my trek up to Nightingale before sunup you could see the shadows of the mountains as the rising sun begin to gleam off them a little. But a great way to start my morning was with hazelnut coffee and a beautiful sunrise well an overcast one rather. But the pinks, purples and the sky was perfect in my opinion as I was listening to satellite radio and focusing on this 20 mile trek through the dry lake and eventually veering westward going through the Sahwave Mountains which comes out in Sage Hen Valley and once I crossed that we then ascended into the Nightingale Mountains to the town site.
The scenery is gorgeous up here but it gets very confusing many dirt roads some meet up with one another so you kind of have to form your own trek up to the town site. I read about many ancient caves in the area I did find a massive cave entrance in this narrow canyon and figured id stop there on my way back. Little did I know I would not leave this place till dusk so I did not get to check them out but I have seen photos of some of the massive caves. While they may have not gone very far back the natives could use them to store nuts, meats and sometimes even their deceased loved ones. Not far a way is the Paiute Nation which today is more centralized around Pyramid Lake however before the Paijute Indian Wars in the 1860's they were inhabiting this part of Nevada.
It took me a few hours to get up here its a slow going road you would have areas of soft sand or gravel then areas with rocks or washouts. Washes cross the road therefore flash flooding has caused boulders and other debris to cause the road to be less friendly in certain areas. I had my dogs with me it was a bumpy ride but I wanted to try this new dog gate I bought for my truck which keeps them in the very back and it worked great. On occasion I would get out smoke my bowl maybe take some photos of the road going into Nightingale. No I am not selling my truck we just want to show our viewers the journey which is more important then seeing even photos of me because this was a no joke type of place. I figured it would be a few miles off the highway but rather its a very primitive journey full of hills, muddy lake bed, rock crawling and by the time you get here you just feel this big sigh of relief like its over for now lol.
I begin to climb up into the Nightingale Mountains the town was built on the eastern flank of this range a few hundred feet above Sagehen Valley. More then likely the town resided below the mill and the mines as their is this big platted flat area just below on the valley floor but nothing remains. Well there is this small rocky hill below with an old water tank on it just a sign that the miners probably lived near this water tank and worked in the mines above up on the side of Gale Peak. The closet towns were nearly 20 to 30 miles a way so you were very isolated if you worked for this mining company and their were no amenities. I could see the temperature drop ten degrees from being on the bottom of the valley floor to the town site above it!
I had to switchback up this steep road which led me to a few other roads one leading to the mill others leading to the mines. Their is a visible furnace stack at the mill ruins so I just parked below it on this hill overlooking the entire valley. The hill had soft earth and mud but someone smashed beer bottles everywhere as a matter in fact some of them looked like they were broke in half then placed in an upwards position as if to purposely puncture other peoples tires. Lucky for me I got out throwing away the harmful bottles sticking up and then maneuvered my vehicle on the hill so I could pull on out and onto this road which takes you to another part of the town site. While our day would focus on the Nightingale Mine it would also focus on the Pershing and MGL Mines also nearby which were other small camps. Our journey would begin on windy overcast dark day sometimes you cant plan for weather and if you go out in the winter you better make sure you are prepped ahead of time just in case.
Nightingale Nevada
The winds were whipping when I had arrived here but this camp was built on the side of the mountain so its cooler here then the valley. Tammy decided to take a nap as a matter in fact she did not leave the truck till almost nightfall at the last location so this was just a Lord Rick ghost town adventure with me, myself and I.
I bought the dogs with me but after my dog was chasing rabbits, running off along with the other dog and standing on the edge of open mine shafts I had enough. I did not realize id spend most of my day out here but this area has many deep mines which are slow going because of the risk involved.
There is this room built into the side of the mountain with stairwell above to nowhere. Really today not much remains of old Nightingale but the mill ruins are extensive and are tiered a few stories high on the side of the mountain. Lots of walls, foundations, crumbling ruins, rebar, glass and metal. Behind the mill are the mines which ill talk about in a bit.
I was thorough found walls and foundations a few hundred feet in length its scattered. I did not find any homesteads though but you could see the different roads below on the mountain which probably were streets. Really this was not a major town miners lived here and there was some bare basics. The town probably had a general store and saloon.
All you can see below the mill site is Sagehen Valley its massive and in the distance rows and rows of mountains. Its very vast up here and remote never once did I ever see a human being. I was leaving my gear all over the place at the mill and exploring.
The furnace is in ruins but you can look up the stack there is also not far away a second water tank I found rusting away. The mines here were mainly consisting of Tungsten but also they mined for gold, silver, arsenic and a few other minerals. Tungsten was used heavily during war time in our country and their was not many mines that mined it so Nightingale had its uses.
Its uses in high speed metal-working equipment, steel, armor, and armor-piercing shells made tungsten a vital war commodity.The problem is Tungsten mines are heavily unstable you can brush up against a wall in a mine and it just crumbles. I show this on film just so people understand that this is nothing to mess with if you should decide to be like me and go deep down underground.
Really, mining did not begin in Nightingale till about 1917 so this was not a very old mining camp. But you would not know it because so much of it is gone and the mill ruins look like a bomb went off. If you go behind the mill there is three or four open pits there are ways to get to the bottom of them but you either have to climb down into them or enter the mine which goes to the bottom of them. Some of the pits appear to not to be pits but rather giant caverns which appeared to have collapsed. This could be because they ceilings of these giant rooms became to thin and collapsed in on itself because when I first looked down into these giant caverns you could see tunnel systems and see massive boulders just piled on top of eachother below.
I really did not know how to get down to the bottom of two of the giant caverns until I found a small hole between two sets of mill ruins. I went back to the truck packed some gear, lights, batteries etc then made my way into the hole. The hole took me down a tunnel for a couple hundred feet where I found a shaft with some wood structure around it to the left and to the right I seen light peering through.The shaft was deep you could hear the rock I had thrown and it took a few seconds to hit then you hear this splash.
I was standing in my first collapsed room which I had to climb some rocks as big as cars then slide down this steep embankment which led me to even a larger room. Both rooms you could stand in and see the sky. For a brief time I seen some patches of blue it would not last long. You could tell these were not purposely open pit mines because you could see pieces of the ceiling that caved in. They probably just dug the mine so big that the ceiling no longer was able to sustain itself. I also found this rusty steel frame in between the two caverns as I slid down into the room where I would have a chance to explore three tunnels.
The tunnels were not very long but there was few splits one of them ended at a rats nest and another tunnel had timbers holding it up which were bending. I remember setting my camera up on a rock protruding from a stone column and watched it literally crumble. These mines are falling apart if you do not touch anything it should be fine but one good earthquake and those beams will be the first to go. Despite that factor I spent a few hours in these mines and they were somewhat extensive but lower levels are flooded. This mine did have lower levels no way to get to them though but the one shaft was extremely deep.
It took me time to get out of the main mine behind the mill I mean the one cavern was big enough to hold a small house. There was a crevice I climbed down into on the other side of the mill which split off left and right. But the left passage was blocked with sheet metal and it looked like it dropped off into a shaft and the right passage went a few feet back. This area was bad lots of loose rocks, boulders and I had to slide to get down to the split at the bottom of this steep crevice.
On the other side of the hill below the watertank is another mine entrance which you slide down into. This may have been my favorite mine of the whole adventure. You take the tunnel about 2' which takes you into this room. The room itself has a three way split with the left passage having wood timbers surrounding the entrance into this tunnel. I took the tunnel to the right which led me to a dead end eventually which had a small room with a wooden beam holding up the ceiling I came pretty close to bumping it so I had to be very careful in here it is not a big area.
I also had further checked out the ore cart chute which is this massive deep pit with a wood frame leading down into it which looked like it held an ore cart or maybe something else that would haul the ore on up. I could not see how far the track/chute went but I did throw a rock and it appeared to be deep. They would probably load the ore into the cart then send it to the top. While it may not be straight up and down its so steep diagonally that I doubt miners road this to the top.
The tunnel to the left goes along this big open area it gets close to the edge so be careful as it looks down into the lower levels. It was to dark and to deep to see how it went. But I could see across from this pit the ore cart chute which I also stood on the platform before I made my way through the tunnel across from it. Eventually the tunnel splits two different ways I found some buried ore cart tracks but after a few hundred feet the tunnels all came to an end.
When I came out of this mine or crawled out across this canyon is another hill and you could see a massive entrance into another tungsten mine. This was a large operation to tell you the truth their was five different mines you could go in same company they just mined different areas at different time periods because they probably exhausted one or two mines which lead them to tunnel more. From afar one would think these are natural caves or caverns and they are just man made.
I did get back to the truck drove off the hill followed the road then parked at this small trail which went west then veered to the north into this big mouth or mine entrance. This tunnel was big enough to fit a train through it and after 40 or 50' same situation no ceiling could see the sky then I would climb back down a bunch of fallen rocks continue through the tunnel and another cavern room would be wide open etc etc for a few hundred feet. This was hard work climbing the rocks, sliding down steep embankments and trying to get to the very end of this giant tunnel system.
At the end of the tunnel I slide down to this room which had this small hole but I did not get to close because it looked like it my have dropped off. You have to be careful in these mines because if you decide to slide down into small hole you may not be able to stop sliding and then it might drop off a 1000' so I always make sure never to put myself in a position where I might slide and wont be able to stop. I did not chance it hard to know if it leveled off or dropped right down into a shaft.
All in all its been awhile since I have done a mine project this big most mines are not accessible anymore in Nevada. But these are so remote they are forgotten. I also made use of my IR Night vision cam and I did take plenty of audio recordings, videos and we did get some major E and H Field readings. Their is no power running up here and my meter was in my back pocket going on and off for hours as I was underground. I lost track of time to be honest with you because most ghost towns we focus on mills, structures, remnants of the past while Nightingale was mainly about all the mines so you should enjoy this middle earth expedition I did.
I liked being in the mines but these are not to stable but it kept me out of the cold, wind and elements. I think I got a bit carried away. I did not have any experiences here heard a few noises could have been anything. I am so use to doing paranormal expeditions and projects alone that this was not a big deal for me. But any other person probably would have shit themselves deep underground alone because these mines are a bit eerie. I did enjoy my exploration and cant wait to someday share photos from the tunnel systems it is good stuff.
Pershing Mine
If you go past Nightingale you can turn off into a canyon which takes you deeper into this range. Pershing is probably a mile or two way. However, The Pershing Mine and Camp came about five years prior to the Nightingale Camp. Its really all part of the same district but at lest with Pershing their are a few very intriguing remnants you can explore.
Mining here lasted from about 1912 till around 1944 this site had some very large furnaces and a big plant. All of it is gone but if you drive in from afar you can see place known as shotgun shack. Which is either a mining office or maybe where the superintendent lived. They call it this because this structure is riddled with shotgun holes everywhere but really its the only structure standing up here near Nightingale.
The structure has two entry ways but its a mere shell with sheet metal roofing and a wood frame. On each side of this structure there are open pits they are not large. But if you slide down into them you may not be able to climb out just word of the wise. One of the pits had a collapsed mine entrance the other looked like maybe a shaft. Then again after looking at it in my zoom it appears that the tunnel is merely collapsed so not worth sliding 50' almost straight down but I did check out what I could.
Another pit had a mine tunnel but I went inside it only went a few feet back. The site is scattered with pieces of wood, roofing, rusty remnants etc but the camp itself and plants are long gone. They actually had here at one time an 80 ton furnace. I believe silver was mined here not tungsten like its sister camp nearby. I let the dogs out to run around of course my dog chased a rabbit up the hill and right through shotgun shack lol.
If you go past the shack you will see this dugout in the side of a hill as you begin to climb over the range. Its not far from shotgun shack you cant miss it. Its just this wood structure built into the hill side with an entrance. Its an underground room and it even has a pipe chimney at the very top of it. This may have been to air it out a little. More then likely meats, black powder, valuables etc etc were probably stored here. This had to be cold storage which was common in the west because summers were hot and you had no fridges so you had to do something since power did not reach this area. I did go inside it was just a small wooden room with a dirt floor unlike shotgun shack which had wooden floorboards.
We would eventually ascend Sagehen Valley was looking smaller so was shotgun shack but our journey was taking us nearly to the top of the Nightingale Mountains who were named after Alanson W. Nightingale who was Captain of Company C during the 1860 Paiute War and later the first state controller of Nevada. This is not the tallest range in Nevada but they do peak out at around 8,200' and we were getting read to go over the ranges higher points of interest where we could ascend at the MGL Mine.
M.G.L. Mine Camp
The journey to get to the MGL is full of gorgeous mountains and valleys 360 degrees. You continue to climb up this canyon then to these rolling hills at the top of the range. From the top I could see Pyramid Lake, ancient dry Lake Winnemucca, dozens of peaks and other mountain ranges. The one thing you wont see from the top are cities, vehicles, towns, highways or anything urban. MGL is literally 25 miles from the nears public road so its very remote and more so remote because it sits at the top of a canyon many miles from this dry lake bed. Actually it sits on the western flank of the Nightingale Range while Nightingale Nevada resides on the eastern Flank so you have to go over the mountain range a little to get to it unless you take one of the roads on the west side of the range on in.
Eventually when you go over the range you start to follow this narrow dirt road along the various summits of the range. Its rough because rocks and boulders tumble down into the road. At one point the road was so narrow I could look straight out my drivers window down the cliff. If you go off the cliffs or edge of the rod here you should recognize that your life will probably end this is a precision drive and its not bad except that rocks are in the way so if you go around them your going to skirt the cliffs within inches.
I have no problem with heights but if you hate them this is not the road for you because it is all heights. I followed the road like this for a half mile maybe less where it was on cliffs. I could see the mine camp, mines and some structures nestled on the side of the mountains in a canyon we were driving high above. Problem was that a massive boulder fell onto the road so we could not continue to drive it which was fine because we ended up parking, grabbing the packs and hiking the last quarter of a mile to the mine which resides at about 5,500' in elevation.
The mining road gave us some nice views could see a slice of Pyramid Lake over the mountains cross the dry lake bed/valley. To the right along the road in the side of some rocky cliffs we found another dugout which was either cold storage or a black powder room. It was as if they carved it out of stones pretty cool and in really great shape except that the entrance was hard to find because of landslides from the mountain above. Then a few hundred feet from that underground room was a mine entrance which was not very large because of earthen run off from above buried half of it. I was going into the mine but had to get photos of the mine camp first before nightfall which was less then an hour away. I figured if I did the mine at night no big deal mines are dark inside anyhow!
When you get to the end of the road it splits to the left is some collapsed wooden structure probably a miners cabin maybe the mine office right by the road. Then their is platform that looks like a tramway or ore cart tracks ran up to it then dumped the ore below the road. Then below that platform is some shack might be another cabin only this one is standing but it does not have door or windows on it. Behind the platform is another collapsed wood structure similar to the one that is adjacent nearby. The one thing that was visible with the MGL is that you could tell this was a camp and people lived up here but with the ghost town of Nightingale its just the opposite because I never found any cabins not even collapsed ones.
At the split you can ascend its very steep but it goes around the rim of the mines. Do not get close they are cliffs but you can get close enough to look down into the pit and at the bottom are a few tunnel systems because you can see them at the very bottom of this pit and I seen a couple t least but its hard to get down there. Their is an area on the other side where its steep you could slide down but I did not have time and it was so steep was not sure id get back up the same way. I totally hiked around the cliffs of the pit looking down into the mine. I actually found another miners cabin above the pits on a cliff although collapsed at one time someone lived here and probably could look into the massive pit from there window.
Inside the pit there was a ladder barely clinging to the wall in midair going to nowhere. I also seen a head frame inside made out of wood and their was even an area with crevice with crossbeams. The nice thing about the pit is you could see the inner workings of the mine itself. Their was at least three different types of mining techniques they utilized here. It was obvious this mine had tunnels, open pits, ledge mining etc all in one given area. I am not sure if they dug the pit then at the bottom tunneled or if this was also a giant cavern that eventually gave way since at the bottom was hundreds of giant boulders.
I met back with Tammy and entered the small hole which is just on the other side of the giant pit. I assumed the tunnels would take me on inside to the pit so I did not have slide down into it. I slide down this embankment of earth then stood up where I came out into this room full of wood beams some barely holding up the ceiling above me as they were cracked and buckling. Their was a bunch of cross beams also particularly across this shaft where the tunnel continues there was a giant crevice in front of me. So it looked like they just followed the veins in any direction they could get decent ore mined.
The room split right and left to the right was a tunnel but it looked collapsed I may have been able to squeeze through but the ceiling in front of it was giving out. Their was these beams then flat pieces of wood on top of them that were buckling, cracked etc its going to go anytime but I could not go further its in bad shape. I have seen mines dating back to the 1850's in far better shape then this so their is always risk involved.
To the left was a square shaft surrounded by wood beams and it even had a ladder heading downward. I threw a rock ehhh maybe 40 to 50' down into this big room but still dangerous. I could have skirted around the shaft and continued to make my way through the tunnel which probably then curved right into the main pit where I seen a few tunnels at the bottom. Problem was that in order to skirt by the shaft it was only a foot wide with nothing to grab onto and it was a slant full of loose gravel and dirt. I would have fallen their is nothing to give you traction or grab onto even the edge of the shaft is in bad shape perhaps eroded so I had to turn around.
I think the safest choice is to slide down the side of the pit on the side that is steep but not impossibly steep but by then the sun was almost down and I could not see hardly anything anymore. I know the mine is explorable I seen few photos but at least I made it into couple small tunnels and the room with the shaft. As a matter in fact the room with the shaft had some open sky about 40 to 50' above me with the shaft sitting in the way of me going deeper into the mine. I did also see an ore bin chute inside actually two different ones. The main room where you enter the mine lots of cross beams, chutes, ladders etc.
Its hard to know where all these tunnels go and what leads where because there are multiple shafts, crevices where ledge mining was done and tunnels. But most of the MGL is collapsed and in really bad shape. I cant see this mine sustaining itself much more its about to come down. Everywhere is collapsed or inaccessible and I am sure years ago it was much better to explore it then it is recently so Id ill advise anyone going inside. You can see the inner workings of the mine standing on the cliffs looking on in so no need to go inside of it just sayin!
After exploring what I could here I did end up going down the steep bank to check out the only standing structure which is a single room cabin. Their was tons of rat droppings, nails, wood beams, aluminum siding etc etc. Out the window looks right down into the canyon below what a view woo! In the Nightingale District the MGL is the most extensive really because its easy imagine the camps set up which seemed to revolve around the mine. While the mines in Nightingale were more fun to explore and check for the dearly departed the MGL had more of a mine camp look to it because some of it still remains because of how hard it is to get to this location. The area is heavily scattered with TNT boxes, wood, rusty cans, rails, bent steel, collapsed structures etc.
By the time I had gotten back to my truck it was nearly dark out sun was behind the Mtns. to the west. I was a bit sad that we ran out of daylight I wanted to see more I had to other ghost towns. Problem is that t night it all looks the same and there is dozens if not hundreds of dirt rods out this way so its easy to take a wrong turn you wont find no easy way back no matter if you are heading in the right direction. Sunset was gorgeous full of orange and purple hues to the west above the MGL. But to find the same road I took in was not possible because the road splits in some areas because some areas are to poor to drive through.
I drove almost 30 miles below the Nightingale Mountains then crossed them at a lower elevation into the city of Fernley Nevada it was intense. It was so dark out there as we drove on rocky roads, through washes and a few times had to turn around find a more feasible road. The washes that run through here look like roads as a matter in fact the roads follow so close to the wash that its easy to drive in the wash itself because your constantly crosses the wash every couple hundred feet and the road is narrow sometimes overgrown with brush so you end up turning into a wash thinking it is the road. It took me a couple hours but eventually I seen the lights of Fernley area and was riding down through a rural part of town and then I felt relief. Taking 20 to 50 mile dirt roads at night is not a joke these roads have no labels, signs or come with a manual. If you take the wrong road you could get stuck, bottom out or end up being lost out in the desert!
We were 1200\ above the valley floor and had to switchback off the Nightingale Mtns. then cross a giant expanse full of brush, rocky roads, deep washes and other areas that had dips that you could bottom out at. Sometimes we would see signs that said private property with barbed wire some of the land probably belongs tot he Paiute Indians. Its to bad I did not get a chance to check out some Indian caves especially the ones I found. But at night out here it all looks the same I was just happy to be in town and on the expressway heading home. Their are some roads around here that require you to own a jeep or 4wd my truck is great offroading but it is big and hard to turn around. I mean imagine I had to turn round on a road up on a cliff by the MGL Mine it was literally a 30 point turn so yeah you need the know how to navigate this vast frontier imagine what it was like back in the day.
That is why the Nightingale District did not boom or last that long because supplies was limited and often if you wanted to catch the railroad it was 30 miles away. You could catch the short line into Leete or catch the train at Huxley Station. Not all milling was done in this district often the ore was shipped to White Plains AKA Huxley Nevada or up to the Toulan Mill near Mill City. To ship ore to have it processed was costly and proved difficult. I had a truck and imagine how hard it was for me and back then they did not have 4wd let alone jeeps so it was a rough go. You were secluded living here so everything had to be imported. The only other nearby town was Jessup which we explored in October of 2018 and finished other nearby ghost towns like White Plains and Leete in December of 2018 which completes our ghost towning adventures in this area for while which were really considered sister mining camps.
It was a rough day lots of climbing, crawling, sliding, cliffs, hiking and paranormal investigating. I busted my ass on this trip and it nearly busted me. I took plenty of EVP and EMF readings on this trek also. Its a really fascinating offbeat part of Nevada not many know about. Their are so many elements to Nevada its hard though to believe such large mines, mills and towns once existed here. I guess that is why they call them ghost towns or rather ghost camps because they all were abandoned and left to the elements. This was a fun little adventure really all the exploring I did was an excuse to burn off some of that Thanksgiving and pie lol. I am sure much more remains to be seen but so very little remains standing which is all the more reason I encourage exploration because without it nobody would ever have known places like these even existed!
Peace,
Lord Rick
PS This report is rough draft final version eventually will come out on our website and could be revised.