These dusty old photos are from a combination of trips to the old Santa Rosa Mine in the Inyo Mountains. Not much is left of this place, but it was nice to see the ore cars. And one of them was still sitting on the rails.
A rich lead-silver mine, it was first discovered in 1910 by Ignacio Ruiz of Lone Pine and was worked nearly continuously until 1938 and then intermittently until 1953. The mine has 4,000 feet of workings, producing twelve million pounds of lead, nearly half a million pounds of copper, and over four hundred thousand ounces of silver. The camp had eight buildings and three tramways that were bulldozed a long time ago. What a loss of history.
There is a fox in one of my photos. I hear the fox is gone now. Why would anyone take a dead fox from a mine?
My photos are from 2002.
