Castle Dome Mining Museum

We took my mom and stepdad to the Castle Dome Mining Museum when they came to Yuma to visit us.  The museum is on a small acreage of private land surrounded by the KOFA wildlife refuge and the military's Yuma Proving Grounds.  The owners of the museum have done a fabulous job of preserving the buildings in the area from the 1800's mining era.  Castle Dome mining district started in the 1860's and silver was mined in the area up until 1979. 

The museum is actually over 50 seperate buildings with authentic antiques inside and outside from the era.  There are so many different kinds of buildings its hard to remember them all.  Of course there were several bars, a brothel and a hotel.  There is a church, a jail, barbershop and several stores.  Many of the buildings we saw were just tin shacks because wood was scarce in the desert.   There is also a whole seperate section to explore where the mine shafts were.  There are many shafts and they are deep some were 450 feet deep.  The shafts were surrounded by barb wire to keep you from getting too close because the dirt around them could easily cave in with some even having steel grates over them.  The grates keep the large rocks form falling in and protect the bats that are probably using the shaft as a roost.

The people that work at the museum put on a little show dressing in period costumes and pretending to be some of the more noteworthy people that lived back in the 1800's.  They helped bring some of the history alive with their little show.  It took us a couple of hours to walk through the two areas because there is so much to see.  The road to get there was a little rough especially with our truck which has a very stiff ride when its not pulling a load.