Thanks and Looking Back at 2023!

I just want to give a "Thank You!" for those who have followed this blog or my work on Youtube (or other video sites). It is not important to me to have thousands of people following what I do. If I only get a handful of people that enjoy what I do that is fine. With that said, I do appreciate those that share what I do with others. My motivations for doing this are a lot different than many other content creators. I do it for the love of it, not for money or as an instrument for something else.

I have learned a lot in the past six months or so. I kind of know the direction I would like to take this blog going further. Yet, at the same time, to do this takes a lot of my own time. It feels like since August I have been working on videos every few days, correcting mistakes in them, and then I wonder where the time has gone. 

So, I intend to take a few weeks off from this. I still have a bunch of drone footage I want to show and some other things in the next couple of months. 

In the meantime, please check out my last video of the year (and any others I did this year if you have not seen them):

Flying Over Aurora (Youtube video)

Have a Happy 2024!

Ghosts of the Past: Flying Over Aurora (Part 2)

Again, the Wild West Mine would have been here. I have never walked up here. This is the nice advantage of drones. You can see what remains here:

Now turning around where my drone was hovering over the Wild West Mine site:

It is nice to see some of the other roads. The following is looking toward the north:

Somewhat northeast here:

This one is a little out of place since it should have been in Part 1. This is hovering near Lover's Leap. Looking west and those roads are supposed to go Bodie.

So, this ends my "Ghosts of the Past" series where I have returned to a bunch of places I have talked about on this blog before. I felt the need for an update in video and pictures. Will I come back in ten years for 8K footage? Lol! I love these areas so I probably will return, but not for quite some time. There are other areas I need to get to.

Flying Over Aurora (Youtube video)

Ghosts of the Past: Flying Over Aurora (Part 1)

 Hey everyone! I hope you are having a great holiday season!

Long story short, I was supposed to have these next flew blogs up by Christmas for the ending of the "Ghosts of the Past" series, but I got sick and then my internet provider went out on me for over a week. With that said, let's get to it:

After I did the GoPro footage and did two drone flights over the area. The first flight started at the where the Daly Gang house would have been. I flew over to the other side near the peak of Lover's Leap. I knew that is where the most popular picture from 1890 was taken looking down on the town. I tried to emulate it, but was much higher up. If I had come down a little lower and moved the drone to my left I might have been a little closer:

A slightly different picture. You can see how the water really "carved" into the where the town would have been. It turns out the town was prepared for this, and I have seen how water would have come down almost like in some of the maps. 

This is trying is looking out where Pine St. would have gone east to west (or vice versa).

For comparison this is from my previous drone during 2020. This lacks the water "carving" drainage of 2023. 

Finally, this is crossing over to the eastern side. Where the Wild West Mine would have been:

I will continue with this one in Part 2.

Flying Over Aurora (Youtube video)

R.I.P. Gunfighter William E. Carder

So one-hundred and fifty-nine years ago, either a justifiable homicide or a murder took place. This is one of the big reasons I (and others) enjoy reading about the Wild West (aka Western Americana): we get to see what happens in areas where there is little law enforcement or rule of law, and how the areas evolve as time goes on until they get proper law enforcement and rule of law.

I have talked about William E. Carder before. More than likely, he would have been commonly known as Billy. In the video I give a short biography; this is mostly a transcript of what I said. This is a bit different, but consistent with my old blog about him that I will link below.

Interesting enough a bunch more about Carder has come out in the past ten years or so. I was reading an old book on the Western Sierra and Carder's name came up several times. That is something fun when you can start tracing names over various places and see how they all connect to each other. I mention one of these odd coindences in the video.

Carder was born in Tennessee In 1832, and by the age of 18 he was motivated by the gold rush to travel on his own to Placerville, CA. By 1855, he was the town marshal of Columbia, CA for 2 years. Right away he ended up killing a vagrant by the name of Martin Hennessy who had an outstanding warrant on him. On July 4th, 1857 he was part of a posse to capture a murderer of a man called John Leary. Carder ended up being the one who captured the guy. By September 1858 he started working for a local newspaper. He ended up getting in a shootout with a John Carinelli. No one was seriously injured. In 1861, Carder was down in Sorona, CA working for a local newspaper. He got into a feud with a rival newspaper editor H.C. Bennett. Bennett would constantly insult Carder in Bennett's newspaper. Carder challenged him to a duel. No duel ever happened but Carder eventually confronted Bennett in a gunfight where they both shot each other in the shoulder. Judge Wheaton examined Carder and dismissed him. 

Sometime after this Carder came to Aurora, NV. He got into a shooting scrap with Thomas Greely. An innocent bystander E.J. Warren was killed during this fight. He married Ann Davis in 1863. He tried to run for city marshal that year, but was defeated. He was not part of the Daly Gang. He did have some interaction with them drinking and gambling, but he was clearly opposed to them by the time the town formed a vigilante group against them. Finally, he was out of town on business with a man named Moses Brockman in the fall of 1864. Carder came back to Aurora and was expecting Brockman to bring a specific horse with him for Carder. Brockman came back to Aurora without the horse. Carder was angry and eventually let it be known that he intended to kill Brockman. More than likely this was idle words of a drunken man, but Brockman believed him. 

This is where the following takes place so on the night of December 10th, 1864. Brockman was right around here hidden in an unused doorway on the outside of the Exchange Saloon. Carder walked out at 11:30 that night and Brockman shot Carder point blank range. Carder never knew what hit him. The buck shot tore through his neck and his right shoulder instantly killing him. Due to Carder's reputation and Brockman being known as a peaceful miner, he was let go with a justifiable homicide. The thinking was while it was a surprise attack, was Brockman just supposed to sit around and wait until an expert gunfighter was ready to fight? One person disagreed with this assessment.

So out here in the middle of nowhere at the Aurora Cemetery we find his grave:

Then...it takes a little work to find it because it is what you might call the "Boot Hill" section of Aurora. It is a little off and away from the other obvious graves. 

It is interesting to note that there are some other graves nearby without names, headstones, or markers, but surrounded by rocks. I have seen an old picture in one of my books that says that one right next to Carder's grave would be a member of the Daly Gang. It had a wooden marker that would obviously not be there anymore.  

That person that disagreed with the justifiable homicide verdict was his wife Ann.

William E. Carder

Native of Tennessee

Aged 33 Years

was assassinated

in Aurora on

the night of

Dec. 10, 1864

I will avenge saith

The Lord

Erected by his wife Annie E.

The video:

R.I.P. Gunfighter William E. Carder (Youtube)

My old blogs:

The old Auora Ghost Town (William E. Carder) blog

All my Aurora Cemetery blogs

The following books contain most of the information about Carder: 1)McGrath, Roger D. Gunfighters Highwaymen & Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. University of California Press, 1984. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/3ejduebr McGrath's book is the classic for all the "wild west" information regarding Aurora and Bodie ghost towns. There is a page or two about Carder. 2)Silver Sue. Mineral County Nevada. Museum Ass. of Mineral County, 2011. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/wzjknjwa In the chapter about Aurora there is a short biography about Carder. It mentions his days in Western and Eastern Sierra. 3)Silver Sue. Aurora Nevada's Silent City on the Hill: An Historical Perspective. S. Silver 2011. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/bdhdwmew This is the book you want for learning about the graves at the cemetery. There is an entry and short biography for Carder.

R.I.P. Marden Kids

 I went over a lot of the Cemtery at Aurora back in 2011. I did not really feel the need to do this one over again so I will link to that one below.

I do want to go over two of the grave areas that are important to me. The one I am focusing on in this blog will be the Marden family kids.

I am going to refer you to the video below that covers everything I want to say about this family. It is the mark of living in the olden days when you have big families because you never know how many kids will survive into adulthood. These days with medical technology it is a lot different.

The obelisk on the left represents four kids. There is a name on each of the four sides of it. I have taken pictures of each side since I was there since I did not in 2011. I show the sides in the video.

I might come back and edit this blog at a later time if there is something else I want to say about this family. I will probably reread the books I mention in the video sometime next year. 

The one thing I did in the original video is I was emphasizing the diphtheria outbreak on members of the family that had it so I said one of the kids of the family survived the outbreak. Yet, there were two others that never had it so the total family kids of the Marden's that survived into the 20th century were three. In other words, all the kids that had diphtheria died, but one. Yet, there were two others that never had diphtheria at all. So, a total of three Marden kids were still alive after the outbreak. I made something more complicated than it should have been, but what you do?

 I think this is something we need to keep in mind when we talk to others and read what others say on the internet. There is a tendency to emphasize something and leave out other things depending on how important they are. I always see people respond to others, "You forgot to mention..." which is probably not true at all. I had this issue when making the Streets of Aurora video. I had to remind myself to keep things simple because a lot more could be said for just about everything I said in that video. Like a lot of videos I do that I talk in, I have to narrow down what I say. My rule of thumb is if I talk to much I ruin the video. The Streets of Aurora video was an exception I felt I really needed to speak in that one.

R.I.P. Marden Kids (Youtube Video)

R.I.P. Aurora Blogs 

Ghosts of the Past: Mark Twain's Cabin Again

 In almost every blog entry I have written on here there have been mistakes. Some are not really important. I would put stuff like I went left when I went right, words left out or not making sense, etc. I have had stuff up for years only to find out, "Did I say that?! Good grief! I never meant that at all!"  For the most part, my readers have been forgiving about those sort of things. 

I have had a few contact me over a few things over the years were my locations were off. In one or two situations I was not trying to show the location of what they thought. Lol! In others there was a good reason that I was mistaken, and I just had not gotten around to updating what I had done. I have few like that I still want to take care of. 

This is one of those situations that no one has said anything to me about, but I have known I have been a bit off for quite some time. 

My original blog on this cabin: Aurora Ghost Town (Mark Twain)

Here is the reality of this situation...I don't care.

Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) lived at a variety of places in Aurora during his six months there. He lived with friends while there. There is a story that some woman took a piece of wood for this cabin and presented it to Mark Twain. His reply was something to the effect that he never owned a cabin in Aurora. 

So, in the blog above I ended up going a little further than I should have. At the time I did not have access to the older picture shown in this photo:

The above picture was taken in 2020. It is a little closer to where this cabin would have been. Notice that Lover's Leap can be seen in the background. That is key. 

When I went this last summer in 2023 I had forgotten I had taken the above picture. So I ended up a little further on East Pine St. than I should have. It is in the video that I note the mistake.

Again, it is a situation that I just do not care enough about. My apologies to any Mark Twain fans that this is important to them. There are certain things I bring up on this blog that are really important to me and others that are nice tidbits, but I just don't care that much about this compared to other things about Aurora. If you do care about this then let me link you to this article:

Mark Twain's Aurora Cabins - Site of his First Success

Heading back down west to Pine St. we see this:

Again, this would have been in 2020 when it was a lot less green and road eroded than in 2020. The Esmeralda Hotel and Courthouse would have been the building on the left.

In the next blog or two I will be heading back to the cemetery.

The Streets of Aurora 2.0 (Youtube)

Ghosts of the Past: The Streets of Aurora

 The video I link below gives you the two main streets that would have been the main intersection of Aurora: Antelope and Pine Streets. Those two streets are where most of the business, drinking, and gambling would have taken place. There were other streets around the town. On those streets there would have been cabins and houses people would have lived. After the years of the first mining boom and until the 20th century, most people that lived in Aurora would have lived peaceful lives. I tend to focus on the "wild west" era so just about everything I talk about in the video is from the early 1860s when there was a lawless element at Aurora. 

Now a reminder about the town, there is nothing really there in the town anymore. Around the time of World War 2 many people came to Aurora to take the bricks of the buildings for use elsewhere. You can find some of the foundations of the buildings while looking at the remains. However, some of the fun is trying to recreate the town from the pictures we have. 

For example, looking east on Pine Street:

This picture taken from 2020 combined with the black and white picture gives you an idea of how the buildings would have been on the Pine Street looking east. The Exchange Saloon would have been right next to where two adults and kid are on the right side of the picture. That was the most important saloon in town and most of the "wild west" action happened there.

At this point, I want to mention the mistake I back in 2011. I assumed the name "Exchange" was the name of something called the "Merchants Exchange Hotel" which would have been a few hundred feet behind me on West Pine Street. I had seen the name "exchange" in print so many times that I assumed they were all the same. Recently, I read there was another "exchange "saloon on the lower level/basement of the courthouse. Each time I come to Aurora I learn something new. 

Going up the road one eventually encounters this:

This is The Last Chance Saloon foundations. 

The road eventually splits. The side of the road on the left continues Pine Street. If one goes right then it is Wide West Street that takes you here:

This is where the Daly Gang house would have been. The Daly Gang was hired by one of the mining companies to protect their claims while they were settled in court. The gang of professional gunfighters eventually became deputy marshals in town due to one of the gang members being elected City Marshall. So, for about a year the gang controlled the town.

I am going to stop here for now. I will come back in a day or two for another blog entry on this town.

The Streets of Aurora 2.0 (Youtube)

My old blogs I did during 2011:

For my blog on the Daly Gang go HERE.

My old blogs on Aurora during 2011 go HERE.

More blogs I did on Aurora during 2011 go HERE.

Some of the books that are important about Aurora:

1)McGrath, Roger D. Gunfighters Highwaymen & Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. University of California Press, 1984. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/3ejduebr McGrath's book is the classic for all the "wild west" information regarding Aurora and Bodie ghost towns. 2)Shaw, Clifford Alpheus. Aurora Nevada 1860-1960 : Mining Camp Frontier City Ghost Town. Second ed. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/bdd4pzeh Most people will want to get the paperback edition in the above link. This the best handbook for trying to "recreate" the town of Aurora. LOTS of pictures through the book. In fact, using this book and pausing my video might be the best way to appreciate the town! :) 3)Silver, Sue. Mineral County Nevada. Museum Ass. of Mineral County, 2011. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/wzjknjwa This book has a chapter on Aurora that was useful. 4)Shaw, Clifford Alpheus. The Last Days of the Daly Gang at Aurora Nevada. CreateSpace, 2014. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/bdd4pzeh This small book gives most of testimony people had in the days following the final murder committed by the gang up until they were hanged. I would recommend the McGrath book with the chapter on the gang first, then getting this one if you are looking for more information. It does include some of the location pictures of where things happened (kind of like what I did in the video).

Ghosts of the Past: Aurora, Nevada

So my series I have been calling Ghosts of the Past was not really meant to be just a October/Halloween series. It kind of worked out that way, but I knew I was going to be doing something that would take me into December. So here we are. This series was mostly me going back to places I have shown before on the blog and them being ghost towns or mines. It was primarily me updating a few things and adding a more up to date GoPro video. 

With that said, I love Aurora Ghost Town in Nevada, but I think I said most of what I wanted to say about the town back in 2011. I will link all those old blogs below in the next blog entry. So let me update you on what has happened.

Overlooking the town in 2023:

First, I did make some big mistakes that I tried to correct during that time. I have not looked, but I think Youtube took down the annotations I did to correct the errors I made. This was a big motivation for me to do another video and make things right. I will note them as we come to them.

Second, a few more books about the town have come out since I was last there. I will note those in the next blog or two, but it was really great getting lots of new information about the town and people that had inhabited it.

Third, I was in Aurora back in 2020. I am going to actually admit to you that I was much sharper in finding what I was after during that time than when I came in 2023. There is a reason for that. In 2020, I was still using my old-style camcorder, and it was about that time I was seriously thinking of shifting to GoPro. One thing I did not really want to give up was my ability to zoom in and out of places, but I knew it was time for me to switch video technology. This is one of the reasons I delayed talking about Aurora again. I meant to, but I knew I would probably be coming back.

I am going to use this blog to point out a few things, maybe a few more blogs to clarify some of the errors I made in 2011, and show what I did on the recent trips. 

 

So what made 2023 a much different year that 2020 or any other time I had been there in the past? Check out this picture of me looking towards the east of Pine Street.

Due to the winter/spring of 2023 the whole entire Eastern Sierra was much different looking than I was used to. I was walking around where this picture was taken and having a hard time identifying things as easily as I did in 2020. All the bushy plant life of Aurora was much bigger and green than I had ever seen before! Not only did I have a hard time walking around, but I had a harder time seeing where the roads would have been. 

Then just walking past the main intersection you could see parts of the road were washed out by the water that had come through here. The above picture is looking at where the Exchange Saloon would have been on the corner of Pine and Antelope Streets. You can see where the water came and washed this part out. It is shown more in the video I took as I mention it a few times. 

In the past I would see maps of where two areas of water would come through the town, and how they must have dug out parts of the area to allow for this. This time I could clearly see where an overwhelming amount of water had gone through the town earlier in 2023. There was a small stream going through the town during the summer. That I had never seen before.

You will see this in the video. So, I was a little disappointed in how that turned out. I truly hope that there is some repair work done on the roads since there was quite a bit of erosion that took place this past year. There were parts of these roads were there were big holes in.

Okay, I am going to stop here for the time being. I'll get back to this tomorrow.

Driving By Nine-Mile Ranch

 Hope you all had a good weekend. So, my "Ghosts of the Past" series will continue and end in December. It was not just a October/Halloween series.

The following video is the prelude to where we just drive by "Nine-Mile Ranch". It is all driving and nothing is said:

Driving By Nine-Mile Ranch, NV (Youtube)

Taken from https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=191201: "The history of the Nine Mile Ranch has a long and interesting past, beginning with the Paiute Indians who inhabited this area long before John C. Fremont’s expedition into Nevada in 1843-1844. According to Fremont’s journal he camped in this area along a little creek now known as 'Rough Creek' in January 1844 on his way to California. Fremont’s camp was in the approximate location of the Nine Mile Ranch today. With the discovery of gold in Aurora in 1860, this area was destined to become a main route from Carson City to the booming mining camps of the Esmerelda Mining District, of which Aurora and later Bodie were featured destinations. Along this route stage stops were established for the convenience of travelers. Over the years, the Nine Mile has been known as Cobb’s Rancho, Nine Mile House, Nine Mile Station, Green’s Station, etc., but Nine Mile Ranch is what shows on most modern maps. Notable people in history are known to have visited the area, including John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, Mark Twain, Governor James Nye, and J. Ross Browne, to name a few." An article about this place:   https://mcindependentnews.com/2018/07/history-of-nine-mile-ranch-dates-back-to-the-1860s-2/

An Awesome View of Mono Lake Two

 Happy All-Saints' Day! I think it is amusing how our traditions have evolved and what people think of as Halloween and such. I have people I follow that are really into Halloween that will say stuff like, "Happy Halloween Eve" on Oct. 30th so now we have an "Eve" for an "Eve" day for today. What we know of as our modern Halloween really goes back to the early twentieth century...about a hundred years ago. I know you will have tons of people that will say stuff like it goes back to Samhain the Celtic pagan day, but no one knows really when that day was other than a guess that it was at the end of October. I am just saying that most of what people think of today as Halloween has a lot of mixed traditions in it. 

Anyways we are done until next year(?) with that, but my series "Ghosts of the Past" is still live as I will start my next project soon.

In the meantime, here is another look at Mono Lake:

It was kind of gloomy due to the clouds and rain coming down. I was once here taking pictures when I started the blog back in 2006. I will link that below. Those pictures were during really nice conditions, but I liked this because it worked as part of what I was trying to do as an October/Halloween type of video. Yeah, the above is in the new "Ghost Mine..." video. Let me take this time to link all three videos I did for this series:

This is the off-road drive that gets you up there:

Off-road Drive: "Ascending Log Cabin Mine Road" (Youtube)

This is the main video that is the most important of the bunch to watch. It is about twenty-three minutes long:

The Ghost Mine Above Lee Vining 2.0 (Youtube)

Finally, this is sort of a throwaway video, and not really needed. However, if you do want to see the drive back down the same road we came up on it is here. It is unlisted because I do not care about it too much. 

Off-road Drive: "Descending Log Cabin Mine Road"

This is the blog from 2006 that shows the same spot with nicer conditions:

The old blog: An Awesome View of Mono Lake

Ghosts of the Past: The Simpson Mine (Part 3)

 Happy Halloween! 

Continuing from the last blog entry, this is the same room I showed the newspaper article. I am standing with my back to where the newspaper was.

A room nearby that had some beds in it. One thing to think about is how did these people live during the winter?! There were heaters used, but being up at almost ten thousand feet on a mountain side can be very cold. I walked around these rooms and some were pitch black and spooky. You can see what I am talking about if you watch the video.

These buildings had more machinery in them for use with the mine.

For example, this is what is in the building above:

I do not recall the gate being up last time I was there. I believe this has been added to keep people away from the mining hole that appeared to be collapsing some and sinking...the best I can describe it...from last time I was there.

Okay! I want to emphasize that this series of blogs about this mine was to build to this GoPro video. It is long at about 23 minutes. So you might want to save it until you have the right time to watch it all at once. If you have a fast connection, can watch it at 4K on a bigger TV screen, then I would suggest turning off the lights and enjoy. Originally, I had music playing through most of the video, but decided it did not work. So, I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did making it:

The Ghost Mine Above Lee Vining 2.0 (Youtube)

I will keep the prior video up which might be a good thing seeing how this one had a different weather condition to it. Tomorrow I will link to an unlisted video for the drive down. My unlisted videos are sort of "throw away" videos that I put up as extras, but do not put as much time into nor care as much about. Kind of like Blu-Rays or Dvds that have extras on them.

Ghosts of the Past: The Simpson Mine (Part 2)

 Continuing my "Ghosts" series with part two of the Simpson Mine. In the past most of my pictures were showing the exteriors of the mine. This time I wanted to show more of the insides of the structures. 

The following building is the lower building of two others. This structure is connected by stairs.

As you can see here the stairs lead into darker rooms. The first room is a bathroom and shower area. 

Then after some more stairs there are a bunch of open rooms. 

I assume that this would be living quarters or recreation rooms for some of the workers. 

The following is in a totally different building below than this building I am showing, but it has an odd story. I ran across this newspaper from circa 1990ish someone appeared to be reading. 

It was a twilight zone moment for me because it was talking about a high school game three hundred miles away near my home. At where I am typing this out right now I am within walking distance of both the schools and the stadium it was played out. It is always weird to me when two things that appear to have no connection to each other create a coincidence like that. 

This is the room I found the paper in. The newspaper was being used, by that article above was put aside as if someone was reading it. The Twilight Zone theme was playing in my head.

Again, if you have want to watch the drive to the mine go here:

Offroad Drive (Ascending Log Cabin Mine Road)

I will continue this in Part 3 tomorrow. 

Ghosts of the Past: The Simpson Mine (Part 1)

We are a few days within Halloween so I decided to get this part up of the "Ghosts of the Past" series. Again, this is another area I have shown on this blog before. The emphasis is really on the GoPro video that will be public on Oct. 31st., but I do have a lot of pictures I want to show so let's go...

I have talked about the history of the Simpson mine before so I will not do that here, but link to a blog I did before that talks about it below. The deal with this mine it is on a mountain above the town of Lee Vining and Mono Lake. It is really isolated, and the time I was there I was the only one exploring the mine. Getting to the mine is difficult because you do need a 4-wheel drive or high clearance vehicle. This year was a little tougher because of the snow melt that made the roads a lot messier at certain places.

When I arrived the weather was overcast, and it would start raining on the way down. I was sort of disappointed at the time, but then realized it would probably be the best atmosphere for a Halloween video. I walked down the road and soon came across the main structure of the mine.

Turning to my right:

The following pictures emphasize part of the main structure:

Notice the part of the structure that is lifted up:

This would be the inside. In the video I walk all the way up and back. I was careful, but wondered how dangerous it really was. It appeared safe for what I do. Standard disclaimer that I am not responsible for what others do. If someone does go up this thing make sure someone else is nearby. 

I walked further down the road. There is a series of buildings that are connected on the left side that I entered. That will be the next blog entry.

One of things I did was take GoPro video of the drive up to the mine. This video is almost twenty minutes long. It covers just about all of the drive except for a minute or so. If you are into offroad driving videos here it is:

Offroad Drive (Ascending Log Cabin Mine Road)

The Ghost Mine Above Lee Vining (Blog with the history of the Simpson Mine)

Ghosts of the Past: Flying Over Chemung Mine

 This is a follow up to the last blog entry. Like my GoPro footage, this was my first attempt using my Anafi drone two years ago a little more seriously than I had been. When I first got this drone I would fly it straight up, take a few pictures, take some video without going too far away, then come down. My emphasis was on taking pictures, and my concern was losing the drone if I flew too far away. At the time I thought this might be the only drone I would get, which turned out not to be the case. What you will see in the video I link below is that I did have the idea of taking pictures first as I flew over the area. The moves were slow looking for potential pictures. It is not the way I do things with my current drones, but I thought I would upload this video as it does show the area above The Chemung Mine.

So the first picture is my drone just slightly up looking at the main entrance to The Chemung Mine.

Much higher to my right from the above picture, looking down on the mine:

I flew over and took this from the backside. Something mysterious is in this picture. I will explain it more below, but when I got home, I saw someone walking around between the trees on the lower left side of the picture. Can you see the person in blue?

I then flew back further to get a picture looking towards Bridgeport Lake and Sawtooth Ridge/Matterhorn Peak on the upper left side of the ridgeline.

I then flew back to where I was, and I took this shot looking down on the mine.

So here is the deal with the mysterious person in the pictures and video. What I did was when I got there was fly the drone first. I spent about ten minutes doing that. Then I walked up with my GoPro and did the footage for that video. All through this I never saw anyone at all. I came home, and a few hours later I looked through the pictures and footage on the computer. I was a bit spooked to see a person hanging out at the mine while I was there. I never saw this person.

What I think happened was that person was there with a motorcycle as I got there. I flew the drone as he was there. As I finished up with the drone, he must have taken his motorcycle and gone out on one of those other roads you see in the above picture. He did not come back through the main entrance area. I would like to tell you that he was a ghost, but this seems the logical and natural conclusion to what happened here.

However, I never saw him nor did I ever hear any motorcycle by there. I should have heard the motorcycle roar as he took off. I heard nothing.

Flying Over The Chemung Mine (Youtube Video)

Ghosts of the Past: The Chemung Mine (2.0)

 So this officially starts my "Ghosts of the Past" series I will be doing. I started on October 1st with Donnell Vista as sort of a prelude to this series. What I will be doing in this series is going back to a bunch of places I have done before. The emphasis is on my new GoPro footage I will be releasing. So, this is why you will be seeing a bunch of (2.0) versions of the new videos. Old videos will remain.

This was my first real attempt at testing out my first GoPro (GoPro 9) at The Chemung Mine. I was not sure if I would ever release the footage or not. There are a lot of mistakes I made in the settings, a bunch of flickering due to the lighting situation, and it ended up being kind of messy. The thing is I do not mind my October videos being a little messy in that helps the spookiness of them. I am just going to upload a few pictures to show you what it looked like two years ago, link to my old blog of this area, and, of course, link to the GoPro footage.

The following are interesting. These "Sentinels of Chemung" made a lot of noise as I was wondering around. You can hear them in the GoPro video. "Nevermore!"

The Ghosts of Chemung (2.0) GoPro video on Youtube

My old blog: The Ghosts of Chemung