Tumco Town Site.

Lets Take a Ride.

I was talking to Denis the other day and he mentioned that he found a ride we could do in California.
He brought out a map and we checked it out. It looked like there were several trails and a bunch of mines in the area.
We also noticed that there was a ghost town named Tumoc.

We decided that it  would be worth taking a ride to have a look so we made plans to go on Monday.

Getting There.

We met with Sue, Denis, Tom and Lillie at the Carl’s Jr. at the west end of town.
Once we were all there, we headed west on I-10 for 20 miles to Blyth, CA.

We are following Denis.

We turned off I-10 and onto AZ 78 heading south.
Hwy. 78 goes through the agricultural land south of Blythe. They raise a lot of cotton around here and they are beginning to harvest now.

They also raise Alfalfa.

I was impressed by how perfectly these rows were plowed. They probably use a laser guided tractor.

End of the Farm Land.

Eventually the cultivated fields end and we climb through some hills…

and drop down into a flat scrub covered desert.

There were some really good views along the way.

Tumco.

After about 60 miles we came to Tumco Townsite.

There is a sign at the turnoff.

This is the site of one of the earliest goldmines in California. It was originally mined by the Spanish. The mines were expanded in 1894 but by 1910 the mines gave out and the town was abandoned.

We took the turnoff and pulled over to air down the tires.
Then headed down the dirt road.

We got to the town site but didn’t do much walking around. There were no buildings or even foundations that I could see. There were some areas that were marked off with rows of rocks.

Exploring.

We left here and followed a trail deeper into the hills.
Along the way we drove past an old cemetery,

and continued toward these really cool looking mountains.

We pass several mine tunnels but most are blocked off or have been filled in.

Here is the most interesting features on this trail.

when you get to the top you don’t know where the road is on the other side.

It’s steep.

Patti took this picture of Tom’s jeep coming over the top, in our side mirror.

Mining Stuff.

We came across these rectangular troughs about 8 feet wide by maybe 20 feet long.

Tom knew what they were right away; they were sluse boxes where the miners washed the pulverized ore to separate the gold from the ore.

Up on a hill is metal covering over a vertical shaft, where some of the ore came from.

An Unblocked Tunnel.

We finally found a tunnel that wasn’t barricaded.
Of course Denis and I had to investigate.

Unfortunately the tunnel didn’t go very far. Only about 20 feet.

Just driving around.

We left the tunnel and drove around through the hills.

While we were driving around in the hills the wind had gotten stronger out on the flat desert to the west. We decided to stay in the hills out of the wind to have lunch.

American Girl Mine.

After lunch, we headed down to the flat country and drove further south.
By then the wind had dropped and the dust was clearing.
We turned west at the American Girl Mine Road.
After a couple of miles we noticed this structure on a hill side

so we drove up a rocky trail to check it out.

It turned out to be an ore loading shoot.

From here we could see the American Girl Mine.
They have quite an operation going on there.

We drove around on the flats for a while. You can see that there still is a little dust in the air.

Eventually we came back to highway 87.

Once on the highway we booked it north and stopped in Blythe at the Sizzler for supper.

After supper when we came out of the Sizzler, the wind had returned along with the dust. On I-10 the wind was  blowing pretty hard but we made it home without incident.

We stopped at the Arco on the way home and Patti got this picture of the sunset on the dust cloud.

Okay that was our ride to Tumco.

We are going on another ride on Wednesday.