Forbidden Universe

Paranormal => The Paranormal & Ghost Society => Topic started by: AngelOfThyCosmos on December 12, 2018, 09:27:24 PM

Title: Our Expedition To Leete & White Plains Nevada On 12-8-18
Post by: AngelOfThyCosmos on December 12, 2018, 09:27:24 PM
Our Expedition To Leete & White Plains Nevada On 12-8-18

I have tried so many times to explore the ghost towns of Leete and White Plains this past year never having enough time therefore my day would completely focus on the two of them. Both ghost towns today are really not as widely known and although they are stopovers along highway 80 so very few remains you would never even have known they exist period!.

Both towns were actually salt mining railroad towns since they sit at the bottom of the valley this was part of ancient lake Lahontan so it left behind salt which they used giant evaporators to mine it. If you study maps you can see them they are massive not sure why I never found them myself but then again the entire area was coated with snow after it had been raining and snowing for nearly ten days here.

I am happy that we finally are done with this project as nearby Nightingale and Jessup are also sister ghost towns. Their is four of them in this little area and a few smaller mining camps in between all along the forty mile desert. Its a very very secluded part of Nevada and while nothing much remains of any of these towns if you search hard enough you will find some cool stuff.

Despite the weather I did not care how cold it was or that it had been snowing. Everything looks so pretty this time of year draped in snow even in ghost towns which are full of ruins and rust. We always try to give our viewers some winter fun also because the truth is these towns did exist in the winter months also and life was harsh so you get to experience it. Not all of Nevada is warm like Vegas the northern part has a change in seasons and we get winters up here sometimes with plenty of snow so life living in these towns could not have been easy.

If your looking for ghost towns with full on out structures you will not find it here. Even on other websites I been to it was very minimal what others have found up here. But if you want some good adventure this area offers it along with alkali flats which this time of year are a mud pool of getting snared in so you have to be careful. My truck would get quite the mud bath up here between the mud and the snow it made this trek a little more challenging. So off we would head into the Hot Springs Mountains as we would find remnants of the past of these once thriving towns which the railroad came through at.

Leete Nevada

The first stop I made in Leete was a place called Brady's Hot Springs back in the day they called it boiling hot springs or emigrant hot springs. The town was built nearby and although they could not drink the water directly they could gather it then let it cool down. Emigrants use to cross the forty mile desert then camp here before heading further westward. Water was scarce so the springs were a relevant site then if you passed them up the next water source was the Truckee River but still a good distance away.

When I stopped at the hot springs the entire area is fenced off which means any remnants of Leete may have been to who knows because there is multiple plants here is very industrial. The geothermal plant owns most of the property so I cant get in but they use the geothermal energy at this site to power the other plants and businesses in the area. The steam coming up from pockets, wells and the fault line give it that volcanic feel as if hot lava is spewing from the surface steaming its pretty awesome to check out.

I could drive on the front and the back side of the springs but could not get very close. The steam rises up in some places a 100' into the air. If you drive along the road where the hot springs are found you will see some rusty pipes and other remnants. They may have been part of Leete its hard to know because so very little remains and when the plants came in they consumed what was.

I heard there is an old rail bed along this road to I did not see it but seen a photo of it. The railroad did come through here at one time but was redirected so the town used the old rails to construct their own short line that went out to the main railroad itself. Today some of the old wood ties remain also there is this trench with hot steamy water across from the springs. I believe I also found a small evaporator near the main road.

I spent sometime at Brady's even though I could not get in I drove along the plants stood by the fencing just to check it on out. You could see for a mile steam seeping out along an old fault line. Its easy to envision wagon trains camping here at one time. Behind the springs are the Hot Springs Mountains which at the time it were looking hazy because it was snowing on all these mountains. The mountains looked sort of covered in steam.

After awhile I went around the plant took my journey to a few dirt roads technically you could do this five to ten mile loop which skirts all around the back of the hot springs then comes out near the plant again and I did this loop almost twice in hopes of finding remnants of the town which is kind of a feat. But the roads back here or main dirt roads are in good shape unless you leave them and go even more primitive.

We took this road heading SW away from the springs and came across the split. According to the coordinates to the right of the split is the actual town site. I was not able to take it if they are right my truck was starting to sink and the road was out. I even walked it and what a mess so I could not get back to this area. Then again this was some no name coordinates I was given and according to other sites Leete is where the hot springs are not a couple miles from it.

At this split though is this giant rocky hill and across for it you can go on the back side of the hot spring mountains. Supposedly their are evaporators back here at least two I never found them. I spent most of my time for an hour or two driving around. The EVAPS are just rectangular pits which today are filled with water from what I read. Back the day they would skim the salt that crystallized in the Evaps. If you look around the open desert salt is still very visible in this area.

I continued to drive on the back side of the springs where I found this brick building with power lines leading to it that were broke or no longer had its power line connected to it. This building appears to have been some kind of restaurant or something. It may have been something else as well its hard to know for sure. But it had this exhaust or ventilation shaft common in most restaurants when your cooking to vent the place or ovens.

In the back was a room it looked like maybe storage it had one way in one way out. The back door into the building took me into this room kind of looked like a kitchen maybe it was used for something else. Then you enter that room and it came out into this huge open area. Someone dumped tires inside but other then that the entire room was empty. I looked also straight up the ventilation or exhaust system.

The way the ceiling was this place looked like it may have been an old diner of some kind. The snow was getting worst visibility was bad also very foggy. This place was just very eerie a building sitting in the middle of this vast expanse surrounded by snowy mountains and the wind was just howling. There was also a pentagram painted on the wall before you enter the back door. The ceiling looked a bit discolored too inside like this was a diner and was stained from smoke or years of cooking but its hard to know.

There was no windows inside just a few doors leading into the place. Tammy did not come on in till I fully checked out the place because sometimes transients live in these places and some are not nice. Not sure who would want to pick a fight with me I am armed like fort Knox every which way but people do it on occasion. But luckily this place was abandoned and it was not as old as Leete but still it is now indicted into Leete as being one of the very few abandoned structures remaining in this region for miles.

One of my favorite things to do is ghost town in the winter months their is a certain eeriness about the dark dreary skies, foggy peaks and lack of visibility. Their was not even a single soul out there while we explored the area we were it. I was happy to at least find this abandoned brick building to explore. I mean that is the point of us going out is to explore some things old or new does not matter. Their was no power lines out here also and may EMF detector was going off like crazy.

The road splits again I believe the road to the right is the back way into White Plains another nearby ghost town but instead I went left. I found a few old corrals in the area cattle still roam this area its an open range. Most of the time I found a few old wooden post here and there but that was about it. I found a rusty large water tank too which drained into this old wooden trough. You see while this may have been a salt mining town some of the residents operated cattle farms so ranching has always been the other boom in the area.

Their are plenty of wooden post everywhere and also their was this giant hill I climbed before I left Leete because it did look like an EVAP. According to some sites they are 4000' in length I think they meant 400' but folks do not give accurate info then it makes my job harder. But we seen this massive mound which I thought would take me to an EVAP but when I made the 300' on top was just more rolling hills.

I tried to see what I could see really their is not much remain of Leete but a few rusty remnants, old corrals, wood post and supposedly the Evaporators. I think the one I found near the town site may have been it. Some of them I am sure have filled in with dirt and mud making them harder to find. Their use to be quite a few year and I may have to just go back after studying more Ariel satellite maps and see if I could at least find one or two because on maps the ones I have seen were large and looked like giant swimming pools.

I wish I found more but we made it out of here without getting stuck the one road was really bad though had to turn around. We would then move onto another nearby ghost town called White Plains aka Huxley.

White Plains aka Huxley Nevada

White Plains resides at the very edge of the forty mile desert there is actually a rest stop where the town site use to be near. The rest stop is where US 95 and US Highway 80 both meet. Personally I do not like this rest stop last year a woman that was elderly and her dog came up missing from here the vehicle was left behind. This rest stop is a cess pool for serial killers, missing people and weird ass people who hang out here so be forewarned. If you visit the rest top their are a few historical plaques you can read not really about White Plains though more about the emigrants, forty mile desert etc.

A good example about strange things surrounded the rest stop is down this dirt road there is this abandoned car both air bags are deployed and its just sitting on the side of the road. Their does not appear to have been an accident its just abandoned one of the doors half open. I seen this car three times its hard to know if someone purposely left it there, was in a accident or someone took the person ditching the car near the alkali flats but its scary to wonder what happened to the person and has the car even been reported to authorities? Its winter folks do not come back on these dirt roads aliens could land and who would ever even see it or know?

Supposedly a portion of the town site exist before you get to the rest stop lets not do that again because the alkali flats trap even the best offroaders no matter how good of  4wd drive vehicle you own. There was this narrow dirt road I took not labeled just over this cattle guard less then a mile from the rest stop. It went down this hill and next you know I was in mud up to my doors. These are alkali flats similar to the black rock desert and this time of year they get saturated with rain, ice and snow so they become muddy or soft. When I got out to the flats I started sinking I could not stop as mud was spewing everywhere and I just spun the entire truck around and got out fast real fast. I guess there is a small plaque marking the town site I have no idea because I turned around with a quarter mile from those coordinates maybe a half mile figured id just try to find another road to it.

If you go past the rest stop just down the road you can follow the train tracks eventually you will come up to a dirt road that takes you to them. This is the Huxley Station site of course the train station is long gone and so is the town site really. This was an important train station because most of the local towns utilized it to travel in and out of the region also ore could be exported via train here. The White Plains station or known as Huxley Station was very important to towns in the area that are long gone.

The station site is riddled with pieces of wood, rocks and other debris. I saw half of foundation and also nearby is a limestone kiln which is said to be one of the oldest in Nevada. Today its in ruins it use to stand 25' in height now it stands about half of that. Many of the ledges have scrape and chip marks that is because this is an area folks visit to mine for fossils back in the day this limestone kiln was used for gastropods.

While I was filming and taking some photos the Union Pacific came roaring past by today it no longer stops here because the town is long gone. Across the road nearby is the Nevada Cement Company which had piles of rock everywhere and some shack. The cement company was one of the largest suppliers of cement in the state at one time. Its not as old as the ghost town but while you visit the kiln you can see it in the distance. Also you can see the massive valley across the tracks which is alkali flats and trust me most of it is very soft so you will get stuck.

However there are solid good dirt roads through the flats which may have some rocks and mud but you wont get stuck as long as you do not go primitive down one of the less used roads. In this case I took this road out to a series of stone walls and ruins. I believe this was a mill and mining site since there was a open pit then a few foundations had rebar protruding through the top which is a sign a mill sat here. The stone walls were all made with native rock but no mortar like the kiln which had it throughout and was built with smaller fitted rocks. This site instead was designed with big rocks all fitted together although a mere shell of its former glory no less a second stone structure I found in White Plains.

Visibility was poor it was snowing all around us on the mountains at this time I just wanted to find the town site and the Evaporators. I never found one Evap here on this expedition but if you look on maps you can see them like I said they look like giant dirt swimming pools and supposedly one of them here is very deep from what I read. I ended up driving down this powerline road which actually follows the tracks just further out in the desert for many miles. The power line road was full of snow in some areas steep dips where the back of my truck was bottoming out and other times mud.

 I almost got stuck here a few times but a couple hours into the trip and I had looped completely around the alkali flats coming back out near that cattle guard where I first had gotten almost stuck on hwy. 80. To get out though I had to detach the barbed wire gate then nearby was that cattle guard which is public the power line road is private but I had no idea when your in the desert if you see a ghost town on your GPS you take any dirt road you can to get you close enough to film, photograph or at least hike into it. I did not see much of anything must had drove 10 miles across the valley starting at the rest stop then going over the tracks in the middle of it then jetting north back out just down the road again from the rest stop. Most of the valley is flat never seen any corrals but I did see some herds of cattle grazing out there.

I decided to go to Huxley Station again cross the tracks time was getting short it gets dark at 4pm out here this time of year so if you waste two hours looking for something or driving around you may not get to see what you came originally to see. So my main focus before nightfall was to visit the Desert Queen Mine which sits at the base of hot spring mountains but its a long series of dirt roads to get out to it which at times are overgrown, full of rocks, mud and are easy to lose because other roads connect with it.

The Desert Queen may have been rumor has it to be the oldest lode in Northern Nevada yes even older then Virginia City or Austin Nevada. When you make the ascension up the side of the mountains you then take this rugged road just above the entire valley on the side of the range. That is when you begin to see pieces of rusty metal, piles of wood and eventually you reach the desert queen mine site. This was a large mine a very large mine were talking a mine dating back to possibly 1850 and its deep so deep it took probably 7 seconds in one of the shafts for my rock to reach the bottom so I believe the mine goes down a 1000' at least underground.

There was this pit filled with wood, metal and other remnants of the past. Also some fire pit was probably a water tank or something on the hillside. I ended up pulling up to some structures the first one was made of stone but the wood and roof had collapsed. There was a toilet inside it had been used all covered in shit it was gross. Not sure who would ever want to sit on that toilet or use it. Next to this structure there was a path which led me into a mine but when I got into it there was steel bars and I could not go into it any further. Up on a hill above that is a shaft but it has a cage around it made of steel to keep people from falling to the bottom. The shaft was deep like I said probably 7 seconds and then I could not hear the rock so it may keep going even deeper.

I found a few remnants of stone walls also found a old concrete foundation which was just four walls with sage brush growing inside. There was also some series of mill ruins with rebar protruding from the top. I believe these ruins were all part of the same mill which sat below the mines. If you go up the hill side above the main mine entrance and that structure with the toilet there is about four to five more mine shafts. Not all of them are safe or have steel bars over them. Some just have a fence around them made with barbed wire and its very dangerous. Most of them shafts were not as deep as the first shaft I found but still if rock takes a few seconds to hit the bottom then chances are that fall will kill you.

Their was a few wood post around here and there also found a TNT canister too. I also found two narrow canyons I did not go in them deep but its possible there are other mine entrances or remnants of the past further up into them. Their are so many mine shafts and mines on the hill at the desert queen site its crazy. One of the shafts had a ladder I did see footage of someone who took it explored some of the mine. But ladders exposed to the elements made of wood do rot and you should not take them. The ladder could break you could be stuck at the bottom of the mine or worst fall to your death.

I walked almost to every shaft I could find even found remnants of an old rusty metal water tank and it was so twisted and mangled. The site is really beat down unfortunately but at the time you could tell this was a large operation. Most of the time mines have a main entrance then a shaft or entrance higher above. But there are just shafts everywhere and not all of them are worth getting to close to they are just black pits with rock formations down the entire shaft meaning if you fall you will hit rocks all the way down the sides till you hit the bottom.

I was searching for an ore bin chute seen photos of it never did I find it but there was this one crevice I climbed down into and took where it then dropped off down this black pit. Mining here was extensive I just wish there was more structures. This mine is the main attraction today if you visit White Plains so are the Evaps which I never found. But this mine had brought in miners to the area some would get off the train and next you know they would be working at this mine when it boomed which was on and off for decades.

I found a few piles of rocks which were probably miner cabins and a few open pits where they may have tested the ore samples to see if it was were digging a shaft there. I did go a few hundred feet up the road also where I found another hill side with about five shafts and a second deep shaft that had steel bars. I could stand on the bars and look down the black hole of death but not to close because I did not want to drop any of my gear down the shaft like my recorder, emf detector or even my cams. But you could put your legs between the bars sit up on the steel and let them hang right over the pit so I put my stuff down then sat up on top of the shaft for a bit lol you must like heights because below your feet you know its hundreds of feet down to the bottom of the mine.

I also found this shaft that was cylinder shaped very small big enough for a person to go down but if you did you would almost be touching the side walls of the shaft. Another shaft had chicken wire over it as if that will hold someone from falling on in. Its just a very risky area just hiking alone on the side of the mountain I found probably a dozen shafts most very deep even the one with the ladder a rung was broke. So the mines here are just not accessible and well my thought is they go for miles under the mountains.

The Desert Queen Mine Camp and the Kiln along the tracks are two treasures left behind when White Plains was a fairly large town. Its ashamed that so much of the town is gone I may have to go back in a few weeks to try to locate the Evaps because they do show up on maps and id love to see them. This town had it all the railroad, rich silver and salt mines today hardly anything remains. Perhaps this is what fascinates me the most is the fact that these towns are long gone but at one time they had churches, schools, mills, mines, saloons, brothels, plants, houses etc etc. Its easy to imagine what these towns once looked like I carry a few guides with me with old photos and I am just like wow where is it all.

Their is a certain sense of peace that comes with what I do yeah I do it alone but less drama. I can listen to music, smoke a joint, get out of the truck explore, have a nice lunch or beer outdoors and chase some paranormal even. I bet men died in those deep mines most mines had there share of deaths and haunts. I may never know though these mines are far to dangerous to get down into but it makes you wonder. I had some E and H field readings at the Desert Queen and if I had more daylight I could have explored more but once that sun goes down you wont even see the shafts and that my friends is risky nobody wants to fall down a 1000 foot hole.

It was almost dark when I crossed White Plains but I made it out its a maze out there and the weather was not great. I spent the entire day in a winter wonderland snow on mountains, fog, flurries etc but no less it was fun but cold real cold. My heated seats went out so that did not help either but I make do with what I have so it worked out. When I got to Huxley gain I drove around at night around the Nevada Cement Company. I was looking for this wall I seen earlier never found it because it was to dark out even with flashlights and my trucks high beams. I did hike around for awhile just wanted to see what this wall was if it is original to White Plains or something newer.

It was a long drive home lucky for me I was going through the city so I got to see my son then after we hd pizza always a good treat after a days of adventuring. I may return to Leete and White Plains to look for the EVAPS not sure yet. Both places really are lacking a town site but White Plains is more extensive because it was a bigger town that had a railroad station. I am sure there is more hidden out in the Hot Springs Mountains and the Alkali Flats below no doubt if you explore religiously enough to find what was.
Peace,
Lord Rick
PGS Founder