Locating Forgotten Mines - San Lucas Mine

The resources of the Earth have built many civilizations. In a country as big as the United States, the mines that powered it's rise were often located far from civilization. Even now many of those mines are still in remote, harsh locations. I've been trying to locate some amazing mines long hidden from mineral hunters. This morning I finally found one, the San Lucas (Perseverance) Mine located in the Inyo Mountains of California.

What lead me to this mine was a video by a guy named Brent who bought the historical town of Cerro Gordo in Inyo County, California. I've been a fan of historical Cerro Gordo since I first got into mining. It has an incredible history and was instrumental in building Los Angeles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Gordo_Mines

Brent has been documenting his journey to restore Cerro Gordo, learn the history and investigate its surroundings. In one of his recent videos he went off to explore a mine, San Lucas, and re-build a cabin in front of the mine for camping.

In the video he didn't give the location of the mine, however using some telltale markers in the video I was able to locate it, then cross reference it with location data on Mindat.org.

I first used google maps to get a lay of the area.

As you can see, it's quite a big area to search, but I knew it was close to Cerro Gordo and on the east side of the mountains so I narrowed my search and fired up Google Earth(GE), one of the only good products to come out of Google. Before I went back to the video I tried to locate it by scouring GE.

Even narrowing down the location I still had a hard time seeing the mine. One reason is there is no road to it anymore, just a faint foot trail. So I went back to the video. By following his route, where he began to walk from and some rock formations I was easily able to locate the mine with GE. You can see a white tailings pile next to my pin. There are actually 3 piles.

Now that I had some GPS coordinates I cross referenced with Mindat.org, the leading database for gem & mineral localities and mineral information. The locality that came up was the San Lucas Mine(Perseverance Mine). It was a Copper/Lead/Gold/Silver mine from 1915 to 1918. https://www.mindat.org/loc-79386.html

This location was actually really easy to locate. There are a few mines I've been trying to locate for years , but have escaped me. One is called the Yellow Cat Mine. It produced some of the best world's best topazolite garnets. It's located in the San Benito Mountains and after reading old research papers, cross referencing with reports, claim markers, etc. I think I may have found it. Many of these localities are closely guarded by collectors. It's almost like you have to be part of their club to learn the locations. Anyway, I think I found it and am planning a trip up in July.

Back to San Lucas, I urge you to watch the video Brent did. It's wonderfully put together and features some incredible footage both inside and outside of the mine.

If I make it up to this mine I'll be sure to write about it.