Okay, here's the first. This silver mine is in a nearby county and is located at about 12,000'. It has my vote for THE coolest mine portal ever. Also of interest was the wooden air line located in the older portion of the mine. This was a dual track tunnel all the way to the face. Prolly never made a dime! I also liked the carbide smoke initials on the air line.
http://www.ironminers.com/mineforum/viewtopic.php?p=113508#113508

The last pic is the view from the portal.

Cheers,
Matt

[/url]

Oops, I kinda oversized those pics. They've been resized and are hopefully more reasonable now.

Cheers,
Matt

wow very impressive portal, ive seen stone lined ones like this in books but this must have been impressive in person, im sure potential investors back in the 19th century thought so too! any buildings/ equipment left on the surface?

Hi Mike,
No, not much left outside. The buildings were stone as well. They look to have been trashed during the WWII scrap drives, when all the equipment was removed.

Cheers,
Matt

Mtn Matt, welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing these impressive shots. This mine certainly either showed a lot of promise with an entrance like that, if only to investors! You find etchings often in the concrete of coal mine portals such as in PA (though they date to the early-mid 20th century) but I've never seen a stone carved etching over a portal. The scenery too is beautiful.

_________________
"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

Dang, that Portal is nice, best I've seen yet. Is that lake up on the Hagerman pass?

Chris.
in New Zealand.

_________________
Alive and Well....for now

Chris,
No, it's near Monarch Pass.

Cheers,
Matt

That's probably one of the most stylist mine portal's I have ever seen! A lot of effort and pride went into making an impressive mine opening like that. With an adit that neat, how big are the insides of the mine? It sounds like it was at least intended to be a pretty big operation. Certainly worth photographing, too bad the stone buildings outside were destroyed. Thanks a lot for sharing and welcome to the forum!

Miner Greg

Pride of the west mine also called the Billings Tunnel, located up North Fork Creek above Billings Lake. Mr. Billings lived in nearby Poncha (Poncha Springs, CO), was from Philidelphia and said to be a good walker. He walked from Gunnison Colorado to the Pride of the West Mine in one day, then on to Poncha that night.

When the arch (entrance) was built, an Irishman by the name of Regan was the chief stone mason. Upon completion it was cristened with a bottle of beer "St Agnes", where in Ireland Regan was from.

It was said that the Billings tunnel bore through Pomroy Mountain into Handcock, CO and was used as a toll tunnel. Also, the impressive entrance was used as the backdrop by photographers taking pictures of prospective investors from back east or wherever. The mine itself was not much of a producer and anyone who did invest lost their money.

The book "Under the Angel of Shavano" gleens a bit of information about this tunnel but the last paragraph is unsubstanciated but makes for a great story.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Do you have any other photos of the site? This is probably one of the coolest entrances for a mine, and it does look pretty interesting inside.

Miner Greg