2005 07, Nevada

2005 08 01 Ward, Thunderstorms

This morning I went out from Ely to Ward, another mining operation that has had at least two lives. Ward is about 10 miles south of Ely in the Egan Range. I have been here several times. The most recent operation here appears to have been shut down in the late 70s. A great deal of exploration was done during the most recent operations here. There is a metal building here that must contain hundreds of thousands or even millions of rock cores, all (at one time) meticulously organized.

The first two shots here are of the weather over the Steptoe Valley. These images don't do justice to the size of the thunderstorm or the size of the valley. They are both spectacular. In the distance the tallest peak is Wheeler Peak, in the Great Basin National Park.

Even though I have shot this building and the operations here several times I want to do so again. I knew that the buildings were slowly being trashed, and I thought the changes through time would be interesting.

All of the boxes in these images contain 6-10 rock core samples. All are meticulously numbered and stored away. But as you can see the place is being slowly taken apart. It really is unfortunate that whoever did all this work did not secure it more effectively. By now any information value that existed in the core samples has to be gone.

Here are some exterior shots. The buildings here must be at about 7500 feet, and the mountains behind close to 10,000 feet. There were a few snow patches high up. The view out over the valley is tremendous. You can also see that the roof is coming off the storage building. Now that the weather is really getting in here I am sure the building won't last long.

Here's the water tank for the new operations here. Everything's a target in Nevada.

One last shot of the weather here. This was a big thunderstorm. A lot of lightning was poking out of it and the thunder was echoing up and down the valley. Very impressive. You can just see Wheeler Peak way off in the distance.

In fact this storm did fully materialize while I was driving back into Ely. It rained hard and was very windy. I wanted to get off the road, and did at the Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely. This turned out to be a good thing, since this is a large complex of buildings and engines and rail cars, and would be a good place to come back to for photographs.

I wanted to wait out the storm here since it was raining hard. The temperature during the storm dropped from about 85 to about 55, and there was quite a bit of hail. The storm passed right over Ely, and I think lightning struck the water tower at the museum while I was watching. The tower is about 100 feet from the place I was waiting (inside a screen door watching) and the strike made a hugs flash and bang.

Once the storm was over I was not sure what to do, so I thought I would drive north towards McGill (the end of the line for the 10 mile runs the railroad makes) and see what I could see. I did not get there since I decided to stop at the BLM Field Office in Ely. (I would put a link in here, but the BLM web site seems to be in the middle of some sort of security related transition, and I can't find what I want.) I had a bunch of small specks on my maps that I wanted to know about and I thought that if anyone is going to know it would be someone at the BLM. The front desk people seemed to want me to go away, but I was persistent. (This is a large office, and all of the other visitors were definitely local types - all had deep sunburns and Slim Pickens mustaches. That's the look in Ely.) Anyway, my persistence paid off and they eventually fetched their chief archaeologist. I didn't know they would have such a person, much less more than one, but they do. All dedicated to preserving history on the range, I suppose.

I spent about an hour and a half with him, and one of his co-workers. Very nice people, very helpful. The more we talked the more questions I had. I learned a lot, and came away with a long list of places to check and topics to read about. (My tax dollars at work and all that.)

One of the things I learned is that the site at Ward is going to be "reclaimed", meaning cleared and restored to the pre-mining state. I am not sure who will do this or when or who will pay for it, but the archaeologist said it was in the works. He also mentioned that a mining engineer acquaintance of his had the same feelings I did about Ward, that it was truly a shame all that information was lost.