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The Delamar Mine is located in the southeast part of Nevada. Gold was found in 1889 and mining continued through 1909. The dry mining techniques used in the quartzite rock caused many miners to die of silicosis earning the mine the nickname "The Widowmaker". Remnants of the town and mill can still be seen today.

The underground portions of the mine are quite impressive. To date we have found three underground winch rooms and extensive areas of square set timber. The lowest working level contains track and still has a working cart. In our time there we have only began to see what this mine has to offer.

From ground level there are drifts that go all the way to the uppermost tailing piles you can see in the photo. What you can't see are the workings that go about 300 feet below where my truck is parked.
The lonely remains of another building.
Bits and pieces of the old buildings. With their common walls these were probably small stores.
Looking down into the valley you can see the tailing piles. They took a lot of ore out of these mines.
This really gives a feel of just how desolate it is out here. The view across the valley is just beautiful!
Just outside of Delamar is this lonely graveyard. Many of the graves have ornate iron surrounds.
Most of the dates indicate that deaths occurred in the late 1800s or early 1900s. This mine earned the nickname "The Widowmaker".
Many of the graves have beautiful ironwork surrounding them. The graveyard overlooks a beautiful valley.
Through the years the graveyard has become overgrown with sagebrush obscuring many of the graves.
Some of the graves have a simple wooden fence around them.
Tailing piles and old building foundations dot the valley.
A trail leading out of the valley. Maps show mines throughout the area.
Building ruins and tailing piles dot the hillside. Even if you aren't a mine explorer, this is a neat old ghost town to visit.
The weather report said there was a chance of rain so we decided to bed down inside the main drift. The mice left us alone as they scurried out to the portal to forage for food. It's quiet and peaceful inside the mine.
Looks like we made the right decision to sleep inside the mine. We ended up getting snowed on. Tony had rigged up an abandoned tent across the entrance to reduce the amount of air blowing through the drift. It helped keep the cold out and we slept great.
By this time a lot of the snow had melted off. I'm not used to having to brush snow off the table before I can start cooking.
There is a lot of framing around this ore chute. The metal gate is lifted by a long metal handle. I have only seen a few metal gates in my explorations. This one is pretty neat.
This is one of the three underground winch rooms. From here they pulled ore carts up from the lower working level. So far we know that two of these inclines reach the same lower level. We haven't explored the third one. Yet.....	Photo courtesy of Tony Pritchard
This is me heading down the shaft. Bill has already rappelled down. It's not obvious from this picture, but this section of the shaft is about 200 feet deep. I'm less than 50 feet down at this point.	Photo courtesy of Tony Pritchard