What They Left Behind At Cerro Gordo Was Worth Millions

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for all the support! If you're interested in winning the silver "coin" we made from all the silver in this video, you can enter for FREE here: kingsumo.com/g/wdc2zz/win-a-silver-cerro-gordo-coi… NEXT WEEK! I'm back with a big American Hotel update. Lots of updates on that front and we're building it up fast! Hope to see you then!

As a metallurgical chemist this is very interesting. We deal with ores and slags in our labs daily and all though people tend to overestimate the value of silver, you seem to have a lot of worth laying there. Ideally you have a mobile refinery bought in to process everything. Transportation of the slack or ore will cost you more than the profit margin. However I also feel the need to stress to not underestimate the toxicity of the lead. Get you blood values measured once in a while. And wear respiratory protection when dealing with dust. Also outside since dust and smoke has its way of always blowing in your face. Stay safe.

Hi Brent! Thanks so much for inviting me down to help out with this amazing project! This is a special video and I was so glad to be a part of it. I am happy you have such a passion for assaying and knowledge seeking. You are welcome up to Washington any time my friend! Next time I am down in your area I will drop you a line and maybe we can work together in the future. Stay safe out there!

As a geologist working at one of the worlds largest zinc lead and silver mines I enjoyed this episode especially. Would love to visit Cerro Gordo one day! All the best from Mount Isa, Australia.

As everyone is aware, the camera makes angles/hills look different then it actually is. It'd be a cool idea to bring a level with you to show everyone at home how steep some of these mineshafts are

Logically speaking, as they started mining the area the richest veins would have been processed first. That would mean that the dump and slag areas would theoretically contain more leftover valuable material the further back in time you went. So the better candidate material to re-smelt would be at the bottom of the respective dump and slag piles. Since you were getting your samples from the surface of the piles, that would be the lowest value material. The "good" stuff is buried below it. Good luck re-mining the dump and slag piles. Hope you make a fortune.

We love you Brent! Can't wait for the American Hotel to be finished 😀

My dad was a geophysicist and sometimes all he would talk about is precious metals and methods of mining and processing them. He would have loved this channel.

Big Fan, really LOVE what you are doing. We are living vicariously thru you and Cerro Gordo Bellshaw left "money on the table" Playing the lottery, and we win a slagging operation needs to go back up and help fund the Hotel build. Catherine my wife agrees. "You win, anything you want" So that's a verbal comitment and here is the written word, Hope to be talking to you soon, CG history is incredible! thanks so much for sharing. We will be there with finances and labor to bring back this history. LEGACY! Warm and safe Regards, Thomas & Catherine

Ill tell ya how they built these structures. My great great grandfather was a carpenter in Greenland in 1951-55. And also part of an expedition lead by a geologist named Dr. Lauge Kochs in East Greendland in 1951.They build a mining town at King Oskars Fjord and it was according to all the pics I have, really physical hard work. They all had really big rough hands that showed sings of a lot of manual hard work with timber and tools. Im planning to make a video with around 50 -100 pics from the construction of the mining town in Greenland., sometime in the the next weeks.

As an avid mine explorer in Cornwall UK, I was well into the history of the mines. We had the world's biggest copper mine (circa 1880), Devon Great Consols. They re-worked their spoil tips many times over. The came across huge amounts of arsenic (arsenopyrite) which was unless at the time and the miner called this mundick. However, the Colorado Beetle, arsenic was a treatment and tips got re-worked. Again in around 1910, the tips were run again for copper and further material was recovered. Today, some mining firms are re-working some of the old tips for material that was not looked for at the times. Traces of lithium have been found in the tips and this is what they are now looking to extract.

Some of the infrastructure talked about in this video is a really interesting aspect that hadn't really got a lot of attention in previous videos. It would be super interesting to understand more about how the ladders, shoots and other wooden structures were constructed under ground. Where did the wood come from? Were there specific miners who specialised in woodworking or were all miners able to put together a ladder, shoot etc. And again, where the ALL the wood come from, there is so many wooden structures. I find it so interesting and would love to understand how it worked.

I used to work at United Keno Hill Mines up in the Yukon, Canada. It was a lead, zinc, and silver mine. They tried a new process of floating the ore with cyanide in the bubbler tanks. When they took a sample of the ore and poured it onto the waffle board there was a light hew of gold at the top. There was enough gold for them to re-mine the backfill they had pumped back into the mines and refloat it for the gold. I figured that you might want to set up a crusher and bubbler tank to see if any gold was in the ore. Keno Hill didn't even know that there was gold in the ore until they used cyanide to float the gold. All the slag that was dumped could be worth a fortune, let alone what is in the mine at your site.

I am an early subscriber, way early but I've never commented. I have to say this episode the way you produced it edited it and everything is better than anything that's been on TV. What you've done and accomplished and how much better you've got it everything is incredible, what a journey I hope to maybe make it up there one day. Thanks for all you're doing to share this incredible story with us.

Y'all really should consider wearing a dust mask when you go down in the mine. Excellent video, thanks for sharing with us.

You hit the nail on the head, it's the wondering about the people from the past and their lives, what was it like day to day, so many people only think about what's in front of them, here, now, today, the latest gossip, latest fashion etc, shallow people, thinking of others and their past, our past, is so amazing, such a great channel

I am 74 years old and even though I cannot participate in the hunt for minerals my self, I will work vicariously through others younger than myself to seek out the early history of mining back in the heyday of 100 years or so ago. Thank you very much, for taking me down the tunnels of the past.

Brent, I don’t know how you do it but your content keeps getting better and better, your energy and enthusiasm is limitless. We all can take comfort in seeing that Cerro Gordo will not become some tourist wasteland, it is a living but vital piece of history. Good on you man!😀

Thank goodness we have a platform like Youtube, high quality slices of life that would never be made into a traditional TV show but this is far superior to 80% of what is currently on TV.

Hello there I was the one that made the stack of rocks, we were on our way out from visiting your town.. beautiful drive from Central California I was very much looking forward to meeting you.. infact I believe we most likely passed each other on my way out.. we stopped on our way to look at the Amazing views.. GOD itS so beautiful! Anyhow they probably fell over by now! Hope to stop by again next time I get on your side of the mountain. Take care & GOD bless!