A beautiful week in Julian, CA., at William Heise County Park. This is inland from San Diego about an hour and a half, no freeways, no city congestion or traffic. Mostly just basic southern California wilderness, beautiful none the less. The park gave us easy access to the town of Julian, famous for apple pies, but with many other sites to see.
The town was originally founded due to the discovery of gold. Unlike northern California gold, this was “dry mined”. Tough hard work for certain. The miners would chase a line of quartz in which gold was contained. The “Julian schist” is very tough so the mines that were dug were very stable and cave ins were non existent. Not to say that this was safe work at all.
We took a tour through the Empire mine that was very informative and enjoyable. Anyone traveling to Julian must take the tour! At some point, early 1900’s they connected two adjacent mines together, we entered the Empire Mine and exited out of the High Peak Mine.
Well, where do we start? Right here ! 😉
Some old iron is still on site and gives an idea of how tough this life was.
The look of “Are you sure about this?”
“Made it!”
