101 Travel Bits: Yosemite National Park - Excerpt: Golden Crown Mine

The newest edition of 101 Travel Bits is out now! The book, 101 Travel Bits: Yosemite National Park,

can be purchased at this link. The book is full of great tips for any visitor to the park, as well as plenty of information for those who aren't able to visit the park in person. Check out this entry from the book, on the Golden Crown Mine, a part of the park most people will never visit:

Located on the edge of Yosemite National Park at 11,000 feet (3,350 m) in elevation, a man named Orlando Fuller established the Golden Crown Mine in 1879 during a silver boom along the crests of the Sierra Nevada. In just over a decade, however, he abandoned the mine when the sought-after riches were not discovered. Since then, the site has remained abandoned.

Today, five log structures—a mine shaft and four cabins—remain at Golden Crown Mine as a historical remnant of an era of high altitude mining camps. The structures at Golden Crown Mine are much more intact that similar camps of the era, and it is the best preserved mining site in Yosemite. The National Park Service has been researching and studying the site, and it has nominated the mine for the National Register of Historic Places.

If you are up for a strenuous hike, the Golden Crown Mine is open to visitors, who can explore the remaining cabins and mine shaft. As with all historic locations in the national parks, it is illegal to damage, deface, or remove any archaeological objects from these sites.

Click here to get your copy of 101 Travel Bits: Yosemite National Park today!