Where is Bennettville?
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Where is Bennettville? |
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| Somewhere in the high mountains near Tuolumne meadows off highway 120, the Tioga Pass, is a trail that leads to one of prettiest ghost towns in the High Sierras. Bennettville is an easy 20 minute hike from the Junction Campground near Saddlebag lake. | |
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| It's really not a ghost town but more a collection of abandoned shacks. The bunk house still stands and a couple of storage sheds still stand. Apparently the miners worked the diggings when the snows melted in the late spring and stayed till the snows came again in the fall. | |
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Just a few hundred yards and up the hill a little way from the bunk house is
the mine itself. They took silver from this mine in the 1800's.
There still is some rusted machinery near the mine entrance and the wild
flowers in mid summer make the location look like a landscape designer put the
old machinery in place for appearances.
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| The mine itself has a warning sign at the entrance and I suspect it makes sense not to go in there. According to my "California Hiking" guide, Shell Lake is nearby. The Magic Raven has yet to explore Shell Lake. Maybe next Thursday when Maria kicks us out of the house so she can clean we'll go there. | |
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| This is an easy hike backwards into California history. It was the Gold and silver that brought settlers to this state. And it was the Silver mines on the Eastern Slopes of the Sierras like this one that gave little Los Angeles its reason for existence. | |
| All photographs on this page and in this web site are registered® to Philip Ronney and Magic Raven Photography and may not be used without the expressed written consent of the above mentioned owner. | |