Traci and I were hoping to go for a 4-wheeler ride on Saturday, but she wasn’t sure that she was up for an all-day ride yet after her gallbladder surgery, so it ended up just being Bradley and me. The plan was to visit some old copper mines in the Summerville Wash area that I’d missed on a previous trip, then ride north to Stove Gulch to see another mine and an old cabin. The Summerville mines are marked on the USGS 7.5′ topo map and were easy to find, though I didn’t become interested in going there until I saw some photos of the place here. The stuff in Stove Gulch was more difficult to come by. All I had to go on was the photos on this page, but knowing that they were in the general area of Stove Gulch/Sulphur Canyon, I was able to match a couple of the photos with Google Earth satellite imagery.
We hit the road pretty early, around 8:30 in the morning, and were in the Swell and riding by 10:00. We reached the first set of mines in the Summerville area and there wasn’t a lot to see there. There were a few small adits, most of which you could see the end of, and some prospect pits. We spent some time walking around the area and checking things out, and now I wish I’d have spent less time there. We eventually moved on to the next set of mines which were less than a mile to the north, but it was a four mile ride along the ATV trail. There was one rough spot in the trail where I had Bradley get off the ATV while I dropped down a ledge and into a wash, and I took a hard hit to my skidplate along the way. Good thing I wasn’t planning on going back along that route. We got to the second mining area and it was obvious that there’d been more activity here than at the last place. The spur trail that I took down to the mines ended at a large tailings pile, and at the top of the pile was a vertical shaft that I couldn’t see the bottom of because it curved slightly as it went down. I threw a small rock into the shaft and heard it bounce for a long time but couldn’t really tell from the sound whether it had hit bottom or just faded away. The search was on for a bigger rock (curiously there were none right near the opening ;), and upon throwing one down, we heard it go on for more than ten seconds before hitting the bottom.

Unfortunately I became pretty sick shortly after getting home. I must have gotten whatever stomach bug the kids had last week. They each were sick for two days with intermittent nausea and vomiting but no other symptoms. My nausea only lasted Saturday evening, but I was just kind of down all day Sunday. We went out with Chris (who spent the night at our place) and found a couple of geocaches near Helper, but that wore me out and I ended up taking a nap for several hours that afternoon/evening. It feels as though I only got half a weekend, which I hope to make up for with an upcoming three-day weekend.
Summerville Mining District Photos
GPS Tracklog and Waypoints (Google Earth .KMZ Format)
GPS Tracklog and Waypoints (Google Maps)
nice pics and story. i have heard that there are some interesting indian writings in stove gulch. Thanks for sharing
Interesting, I will have to keep an eye out for the rock art the next time I go to Stove Gulch. I didn’t get a chance to see the old cabin near the Price River, so I’ve got plans to go back this year and explore some more.