Aerial Tramway Towers
by Robert Bales
Title
Aerial Tramway Towers
Artist
Robert Bales
Medium
Photograph - Photo
Description
We spent several days seeing some of the sites of this wonderful tour.
Mackay�s Mine Hill Tour is a self-guided tour of a number of historically productive gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc mines in the Knob Mountains adjacent to Mackay, Idaho, about 30 miles north of Arco. This is a cool riding area because it features riding across high trestles and ATV-width trails in a forested environment. Several loop trips ranging from 20 to 24 miles in length are available to tour the mines, and 20 interpretive sites can viewed along the way. The mine tour takes from two to four hours for an ATV or motorcycle, depending on the speed of travel and stops along the way.
Mackay�s Mine Hill Tour is a self-guided tour that includes most of the historic sites and structures that make up Mackay�s mining heritage. Some sections of the tour are accessible for all vehicles, and other sections are only accessible to high-clearance vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles, horses, mountain bikes or hikers, All of the routes climb from about 6000 ft. to 8000 ft. elevation and may take 2-8 hours. The route to the renovated Shay railroad trestle is an 8-mile round trip and some of the route is a narrow, single lane without turnouts. Please use the map and know the routes best suited for your vehicle. Most routes
are narrow and have blind corners. The Tour is not passable for motor homes or RV trailers.
The TRAMWAY consisted of a 1-1/4" dia. fixed cable in a loop more than 6 miles long, affixed to each side of the towers. The ore buckets dangled on their rollers from this cable, pulled or restrained by a 3/4" traveling cable. The TRAMWAY operated on gravity power; the loaded ore buckets going down pulled the empty, or often loaded, ore buckets back up. Most of the 36 TRAMWAY towers have been dismantled or fallen down leaving only remnants of what was erected in 1917. The significance of the anchor and tension tower is explained at the site.
Uploaded
August 1st, 2014
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Viewed 1,195 Times - Last Visitor from Ottawa, ON - Canada on 03/28/2024 at 9:56 PM
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Comments (14)
Jon Woodhams
Really nice work here, Robert. Again, you've caught the depth and breadth beautifully! v
Barbie Corbett-Newmin
It's a great view and sounds like an interesting tour!
Robert Bales replied:
Thanks Barbie and it is well worth while to do the tour, but we only got to do about half of it.