Saturday morning September 12th, Wanda, stu, and I took off to Gage. It’s a little burg around 20 miles west of Deming. We were headed for the Victoria mountains for an ATV ride. We ended up getting started later than planned, but what the hell we had all day.
Stu and I traded trucks for the day as his has and automatic transmission and we were hauling to trailers. WOW, it sure felt good to drive again and I never once tried to push in the clutch. We parked in a large graveled area next to some kind of rock quarry and proceeded to get the ATV’s unloaded.
Here is a GPS track of our ride. It covers an area of around 14 miles, which was plenty for the day.
There were quite a few mines in this area but they were blocked from entry by metal grates, fences, etc. This was part of the mine safeguards act back in 1994. This project consisted of safeguarding 120 shafts, 18 adits and 26 open stopes. All disturbed areas were seeded. The various mines within the project area operated from about 1880 to 1948 and produced gold, silver, lead, copper, iron and zinc ores. It appears that the land was then sold to another company and worked for awhile in 1915 so the pictures of the rock building were not very old. They appeared to be employee housing.
I walked, hobbled up to this mine. From the ATV you could not see that it was sealed, so I had to take a look. Of course when I got there I was disappointed to see that it was sealed.
Inside the entrance I found the following plaque.
In case you can’t read it. A 10 year old boy that died in this mine in 1963.
This is one of the brass plates that they install on abandoned mines. It was placed when the mine safeguards act went into effect.
Here are a couple of shots of what's left of some of the buildings.
This is Wanda and Stu ripping down the road.
Stu and his very diligent navigator Tiger
The wide open spaces.
This rock we quickly dubbed as Apehead Rock, Can you see why?
We got back in town just in time to have a beer before heading to a Birthday party at the VFW. Wow what a day. I think we all died early that night.
Catch ya next time. Enjoy.
Chuck, good to see your out and about, tryed to get the boys in the water at casper swell big and no visability, abs were calling but want to make sure the boy have fun in the water and not get freked. Matthew , my youngest is is 13, loves the water and is ready to get certified.
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