This run was the next weekend from the last one. I had been having problems with my navigation computer, one specific map program and my buddy Lance had done a bunch of work on it trying to get it to work right, but there was only one way to find out if it was working correctly--take it for a drive.
We settled on a trail I had seen recently. Now, once upon a time, long, long ago, before roads connected all of the little towns in the Bradshaw mountains, ore from the mines and supplies from the bigger towns were transported by mule teams. Hauling ore in this fashion is extremely expensive. If mineral prices drop below a fairly high price, mining becomes unprofitable. Much like the situation mentioned in previous posts regarding Jerome, a railroad was needed. A railroad through this area would be quite a feat of engineering and labor. The railroad would start out of Prescott and end up in Crown King. For years I wondered how a railroad ended up in Crown King starting from Prescott. Now much of the road that we drive on to get to Crown King is old railroad grade, but I could not figure out how it got down into the valley. I finally found an old hand drawn map that showed the route that the railroad took. I couldn't plot the map onto a current map, but with a bunch of time on Google Earth, I was able to locate pieces of where it ran and how it was routed. Some of it was visibly still drivable. Much of it is not however. A bunch of the old rail grade parallels highway 69 from Dewey/Humboldt to Prescott and is visible from the road where there are fills that crossed low areas and cuts through hills. Another area that can be found but not driven is near Blue Belle Mine. Some mining operations have restarted at the mine and a locked gate blocks the road to the mine. This was a neat setup. The ore came out of the mine area on a tramway and was dumped into ore bins at the railroad siding. Here the train would be loaded to take the ore to the mill. The tramway was over a mile long. I have heard the upper end of the tramway was still standing, but I can not determine for sure since the road is now closed. The railroad siding is long gone as are the bins and tramway. A little further down the line, the grade passes through private property and down beyond that finally comes out onto public land. This is where we set out to.
This was basically a research run to see what could actually be driven and how far we could go because the satellite imagery on Google Earth only goes so far. We set out, Lance, my boy and I in the Suburban and Lance's youngest son running point on a dirtbike. He and Lance had a real neat communication device between his helmet and Lance's phone. It was Bluetooth so it worked even when we had no cell coverage. Having him running point was very cool as he would call and tell us what he was seeing and not to go this way or that.
So we set out and got on the trail.
Washout on a filled low area that Lance's son called out:
There was a bypass to the raised area that we took to bypass the washout:
Last summer was fairly damp and we were surprised to see the cattle tanks (AKA ponds in other parts of the country) actually had a fair bit of water in them:
I don't think I'd like to be hiking along and come over this hill and have to navigate down through all of this cacti:
We came to a point, next to a tank, where the trail kind of stopped. It was obvious the railroad grade continued on ahead so Lance took off to wee where it went:
Looking back up from the way we came down the hill:
A little further down the hill:
Gigantic conglomerate rock along the way:
The railroad looped around down the hill we hiked down looped around and ended up way down below where we were. It is visible down along the side of the canyon way below where we are:
Unfortunately, this is where our journey on the railroad ends. More research will have to be done to see if the lower area can be accessed from somewhere down below. We ended up wandering back via a different route than we entered. We had a good time and learned a fair bit about the old railroad and the route it took. Hopefully I will be able to continue the story of this railroad at some point when I learn some more about the area.
