This is the first abandoned limestone mine I ever explored and it is a big one… As an essential ingredient in concrete, this mine was brought into existence together with a nearby concrete producer in 1910. Underground mining continued into the early 1960’s before the focus shifted to the open pit mining of limestone nearby. Although significantly remodeled over the years, the concrete production plant remains open.
My exploring buddy for this day is Alessio (who introduced me to this site) and his exploring channel can be found here:
/ @urbexale
As it is sedimentary, limestone is made up of the skeletal remains of countless living creatures such as coral and foraminifera. I suppose it is somewhat morbid to consider that when walking on a concrete sidewalk, for example, that we are tromping on the corpses of millions of living creatures. Taking it a step further, consider that limestone is a common ingredient in toothpaste as well! It’s labeled as calcium carbonate should you choose to examine your toothpaste.
This mine is located in the region of Tuscany, which is more commonly associated with fine wine and historic cities such as Florence and Siena. However, I assure you that it has a very fine selection of abandoned mines as well.
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really does make a difference…
You can click here for the full playlist of abandoned mines: goo.gl/TEKq9L
Thanks for watching!
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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them - nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.
These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that niche of our history is gone forever. But, you know what? We have fun doing it! This is exploring history firsthand - bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.
So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
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