The Dawn Mine

The allure of gold has a long history of making humans do crazy things. So in 1895, when two prospectors (their names now lost to time) stumbled out of Millard Canyon with freshly mined gold nuggets clenched in their fists, gold fever took over. In short order, the area was jammed with numerous prospectors working many small claims — and one of those claims was the Dawn Mine.

First owned by a fella who went by the name of Bradford Peck, the Dawn Mine is said to have produced a fair bit of gold in its heyday — gold that was carried by mule up the nearby Dawn Mine Trail to the Scenic Mt. Lowe Railway — but its heyday ended sometime in 1937. That didn’t keep other miners — and a few adventure seekers — from trying to strike it rich as late as the 1950s.

Today, however the mine sits dormant. At one time, there was a wooden door that blocked entrance into the mine, but that has long since been lost. The inside of the mine is said to be dangerous, with many pools of water concealing deep pits (as in 55 feet deep) along the dark corridors. Tread lightly.

GPS Coordinates: 34.226553, -118.129761 [ Google Maps ] (WGS84 Standard Datum)

A version of this was originally published on the now-defunct Findery on March 3, 2014. Findery was something of an Instagram for places, and a site I really enjoyed. It went offline sometime in early 2022. I’ve decided to reproduce a few of my Findery posts for posterity.

I later expanded the above post for the Los Angeles Explorers Guild in an entry titled, appropriately, The Dawn Mine.

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Header image: Entrance to the Dawn Mine in 2007. Photo from the author’s collection.