Garden City Way

Somewhere along Garden City Road (and presumably near Garden City Pond) should be the ruins of the Garden City Mine. It was our hopes to find these ruins during a drive along the old road early in the fall. Almost too easily we happened across a small poor rock pile along the north side of the road. Poor rock piles mean a nearby mine, and we took a look around to find it. We dropped down from atop the small pile and entered a shaded cedar swamp, sprinkled with a variety of shallow dips and holes in the ground. It was possible that these pot marks were the result of the swampy soil, or they could be subsidence from a mine underneath our feet.

We carefully took a look around and stumbled across an orange pipe exiting from one of these holes. The pipe rose only half a foot from the hole before it took a sharp turn and ran out towards the hole’s edge reentering the ground along the earth wall. The hole seemed square in shape, lined on all sides with remnants of wood boards. Although the floor of the hole was a thick black mud, remains of wooden planks could be seen sticking up from the mud near the holes sides.

While the wooden edges and planks might of suggested what we found was indeed a shaft, we weren’t convinced. This was mostly due to the fact that it wasn’t marked in any way. Almost every mine shaft we found had been marked, either with fallen fences or old signs. This had neither. And even though lots of shafts had an exhaust pipe sticking out of them of some sort, this one looked more like a water pipe. Our theory was that it was an old well or cistern, and not an old shaft.

This was a good start however, and we were sure we would find more ruins now. Fanning out from our find we quickly came to a sprinkling of poor rock scattered along the forest floor. There seemed to be a lot of them along a steep ridge, and on closer inspection we discovered that the ridge was actually another poor rock pile - so old that it had successfully covered by soil and trees. Climbing to its peek we looked out across more of the rock pile, spreading out from a small clearing into the surrounding woods in all directions. The forest had almost reclaimed this pile, and trees were quickly encroaching on the remaining clear areas of the pile.

On one edge of the pile were the items we had been missing before: old metal fence posts and barbed wire. While they had fallen down, they still managed to form a circle around an hollow in the piles edge. This was most likely the shaft, near the rock pile and clearly (somewhat) marked by an old fence. The shaft was alone however, with no other ruins to be found anywhere near the pile. Our only glimmer of hope was an old metal tube that lay on its side in the woods - possibly an old smokestack. Besides that our search only turned up the road as we stumbled out onto it.

Was this the remains of the Garden City Mine? The mine was a minor producer and was in operation way back in the mid 1800’s. The rock pile was defiantly old, and looked similar to the piles found at the North American and Cliff which also were from the same era. The mine was not in operation long enough to probably warrant the erecting of more permanent stone buildings that might be found today. Most likely the buildings were all made from wood and have long since rotten away. There was another mine in the area (the Meadow Mine) and these piles could just as easily belong to that mine instead. We’ll need to return and take a closer look in the area with the leaves and brush down. Maybe we’ll get more answers then.

Random Posts

• The Barren Beach
• Hungarian Falls Trail