Joshua Tree And The Old Dale Mining District

This adventure started early in the morning on Dillon Road in Coachella. From there we took Interstate 10 to the Cottonwood Springs Road exit which led us into the Joshua Tree National Park. We hit the dirt at the intersection of Old Dale Rd and Black Eagle Mine Rd, and headed toward the mountains. After 4x4ing through a section of road totally submerged in water from the recent rains, we finally arrived at our first destination, The Mission Mine – home to the deepest mineshaft this side of the Mississippi River.

From there we headed further into the mountains, stopping at the Sunset Mine, also known as “The Flag Building” then continued over to the Golden Egg Mine.

We have been to the Golden Egg Mine several times. There are remains Karl Schapel’s cabin and other buildings, as well as a few shallow adits and shafts and a large can-dump. On this trip we stumbled onto what must have been the “real” mine. A very long adit, complete with narrow-gauge ore-cart tracks and even an old ore cart! This adit is a short distance from the old buildings, and adits at the road level and is tough to find, but well worth the search.

After leaving The Golden Egg we continued over the mountains stopping at several mines including The Gypsy Mine and the Imperial Mine. We finally ended the day just after Sunset on Artemecia Ln in Twentynine Palms.