“Humans have entered the San Gabriels in almost every conceivable manner. We have come into the mountains for a multitude of reasons. And we have come in great numbers. Few mountain ranges anywhere have been so much viewed, swarmed over, dug into, and built upon by the human species.”

John Robinson, Trail of the Angeles

The southern foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains must have been bustling with activity at the turn of the twentieth century. Tourist attractions like the Echo Mountain resort and the Mt Lowe railway drew weekly crowds, dams were built for flood control, summer cabins cropped up in the canyons, San Gabriel valley cities like Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Azusa, Claremont were experiencing real population explosions, which meant construction, which meant extensive logging, and of course there was mining. Mining for gold.

Today, walking in those mountains is a welcome getaway from the teeming LA metropolis. The mines are abandoned, visited only by curious hikers. The Echo Mountain resort is just ruins, as is the Mt Lowe railway, and other oddities like the Bridge to Nowhere, the Mueller Tunnel are inexorably being reclaimed by the forces of nature. I can’t help imagine that, in due time, whatever that time is, human projects like, say, Los Angeles, will reach a stage where it makes more sense to abandon than continue, because the money runs out, it’s too dang hot, a killer bug decimates ninety percent of humanity, etc..(fill in your own doomsday scenario).

In the meantime, I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope not to fall into a sixty foot mineshaft filled with icy water.

The ‘B’ story for this walk is that the trail to the Dawn mine is being expertly restored by the USDA Forest Service. Thank you.

History of the Dawn mine and map.

Walking Project 014_lost in a goldmine or two from chris worland on Vimeo.