Arbon Valley Mines

W

hile riding my dirt bike on the Onion a few years ago, I stumbled across a trail that made switch backs up the mountain, and led to quite a few old, abandoned mines. Most of them were caved in at the entrance, except for one that was still open enough to crawl down into.

Once inside, I was blown away by how big of an operation must have gone on there. There were still tracks for a cart to carry out excavated dirt, and you could still see the places where the miner had drilled holes into the walls. After going straight into the mountain for about 100 feet, the mine split into three different tunnels, one going straight, while the other two veer of to the left and right. The tunnels to the right and straight were caved in, so I went left. After walking down the mine a little longer, I found a huge rusty tank of some kind that had pipes coming out of it heading further into the mine. I could also see that behind the tank, was another dark tunnel, going back further into the mountain.

After deciding to stay on the path that I was on, I followed the pipes from the tank and the tracks to a pile of old boards, going out across a huge gaping hole. I later realized that what I was looking at was what was left of an elevator and an elevator shaft. Since I could not see the bottom from shining my light down, I decided to try to throw a rock down the hole and count the seconds until I could hear it hit the bottom. After the rock left my hand, it fell into the pitch black darkness for about 4 seconds, and then hit what I thought was the bottom. About three seconds later, I heard it hit the actual bottom of the hole.

Once back outside, I took a quick look around the area and discovered an old collapsed cabin, and the pile where the miner or miners dumped the excess dirt and rock. After being in the mine, I began to come up with some questions that I would like to know the answers to.

• Who owned the mine, and what was being mined out of the mountain?
• Was the mine ran by a small group of people or was it a much bigger operation?
• How long ago were the mines in use?

These are just a few of my questions and I would like to know more about the mines. I would really like to learn more about the history of the mines and Arbon Valley, so if anyone has any information about them, submit a news story to our editor or send me an email at, arbon_ite@hotmail.com .