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Posted by Ballpark Frank (64.79.35.96) on 08:55:15 06/23/17
In Reply to: Thanks! posted by Jilly
Hi Jilly,
Another thought occurred to me this morning. I totally spaced out all the mining activity up above Cooke City. If you have an SUV, you could easily access all sorts of old mine dumps up there. Actually, I could drive a family car up the main dirt road that accesses the network of smaller, rougher roads that radiate out across those mountainsides.
There was a time when most, if not all, those old mining claims were in the hands of miners or their descendants, but the Forest Service got their hands on all or most of them in recent years. I have traveled extensively up there in an SUV in the summer and snowmobile in winter. There is a lot of exploring to do, and you might find some interesting specimens on or near the mine dumps. After all, they were finding gold up there!
Depending on your age, you may or may not remember the flap about the Canadian mining company that wanted to re-open and expand the New World Mine at Crown Butte back in the 1990s. The Clinton Administration eventually worked a deal to prevent that, because of fears of contamination of Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone with arsenides, cyanides, and other lovely mining byproducts.
There are also some old mines in the hills above Gardiner, in the Jardine area, and further east, just north of Yellowstone.
One of the advantages of running around in the hills above Cooke City is that your pooch could join you in any out of the way ground exploration.
Ballpark
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