Harquahala Mountain
03/05/2007
03/05/2007
03/05/2007
Arizona is just littered with mines and the Harquahala Mountain is no exception. It also is home to the Harquahala Peak Smithsonian Observatory. Built in the 1920s using manual labor and mules to haul everything up, it is now on the registry of protected places.
I thought the road up to the Sunflower Mine was bad, well this was worse. It was only about 7 miles, but they were hard, steep miles sometimes necessitating my getting out of the truck to remove very large rocks from the road (and I use that term road loosely). The view was spectacular however and well worth the trip.
What's left of the old Harquahala Mine Buildings
Looks like an old processing furnace
There's no explanation who is burried in the cemetary. Possibly miners who died
We climbed up one of the nearby hills which is riddled with mine openings. That's the truck down there
I'm in the entrance of one of the old mines. It goes way, way, way back in the hill
Just down the road a bit is what's left of the hopper of the Golden Eagle mine
Some old tailings from Golden Eagle - who knows what's in any of this but it's probably not good
A nice flat section of the road up to the observatory. It's hard to get a good idea of how bad this is
The old observatory
The view from the observatory