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The remains of a mine building lies a few hundred yards from the mine. The building's foundation is quite obvious, but what seems unusual is that it appears only to be the framing for the floor. There is no sign of floor boards, walls or any form of roof. I guess it will remain a mystery.
This appears to have been "cool" storage. The structure is set back into the hillside a few feet. Shelves line the sides and back. The shelves have fine screen wrapped around them and the doors apparently to keep out the mice.
The Tiffin mine has a number of adits dotting the hillside. The size of the tailings pile indicates that the mine should be a reasonable size.
I wish I knew mineralogy! I'm guessing that this is some form of copper based on the color. I enjoy seeing various minerals in the mines.
Most of the mines I've visited in southern Nevada don't have many "pretty" minerals. I'm sure the miners cared more about the value of the ore than how pretty the rocks were.
This little ladder leads up to one of the adits. I can't tell if they were following the ore, creating additional access, or trying to provide ventilation. It seems like I always walk away from these mines with more questions than I started with....
Down another drift was this rise that lead to the surface. Curious.
My interest level went WAY up when we came to this small headframe in the main drift. It wasn't very large, but it supported a significant inclined shaft.
  Photo courtesy of Mark Miera
Looking down the inclined shaft we couldn't see the bottom. The ladders were quite solid so I decided to head down to take a look.
  Photo courtsey of Mark Miera
Heading down the ladder! It turned out to be a long way down. I'm estimating that the incline is about 150 feet deep. I don't go to the gym, but this is a pretty good workout. I get my own stair step workout.
  Photo courtsey of Mark Miera
About half way down I cam across this structure. At the top is an ore hopper that sits directly above the rails. An ore cart would be lowered until it was right below the chute, then filled with ore and hauled back up the incline. There is a small platform on the left.

The small dot of light at the top of the ladder is Mark's headlamp.
There are various remnants of mining equipment. The wooden box has a small storage compartment on the right hand side. The metal can at the lower right has some wax in it and may have been used as a home made reflector for a candle.
This ladder lead up into the stope that fed into the ore hopper.
This is about the worst rung on the ladder. After all of these years it's amazing the condition of the wood.
I descended all of the way to the bottom only to find it filled in with dirt. That is often the case in these old mines. Over time gravity and nature will reclaim these spaces.

Time to head back up. I can see Mark's headlamp waiting for me at the top of the ladder.
Somehow the climb up seems much further than the climb down. I wonder why that is???
This was Mark's first day out mine exploring. He really enjoyed it and expect him to see him out again in the future.
A few months later my friend Tony and I returned to the Tiffin Mine to see if we could dig through the plug at the bottom of the incline.
At this point we have widened the water channel enough to climb down further.
Tony was down in the little chamber taking his turn with the shovel. It's a little spooky being so far underground and trying to dig our way into an old drift.
After digging out a small trough, I wiggled my way back into the drift. At this point I was opening up the trough so Tony could follow after me.
Here comes Tony! As you can tell it is a bit of a tight squeeze.
Just past the plug we found the skeleton of bird. There were a number of other bird skeletons in this portion of the mine.

Ultimately this drift didn't go very far. About twenty five feet from the plug the drift split into two. Each of the two drifts ended after about twenty five more feet.

I looks like this was primarily an exploratory shaft that ultimately did not pay off.