Proceed With Caution

The trend now days is to seal or gate any mine openings deemed a hazard to the public.  This has sparked a debate between those who feel that state and federal officials have no right to tell them how to endanger their lives and those who want all wilderness areas made safe as a school playground. Sentiment runs high in favor of leaving the mines as they are.  As heartbreaking as it is to see them sealed or gated, I also understand the need for corrective action. Most abandoned mine accidents involve  vertical shafts. Just recently two young sisters in Arizona drove an ATV into a vertical shaft, killing one and seriously injuring the other.  Here in New Mexico, a self styled prospector near Magdalena was killed when the shaft he was lowering himself into collapsed and sent him plunging into 10 feet of water. Near the ghost town of  Kelly, New Mexico another adventurer was trapped and died  inside the shaft of an abandoned gold mine he had entered.

The main criteria used to determine what mines should be sealed seems to be popularity and funding, the mines that are easiest to get to, tend to have more people poking around, thus, if money is available they'll get sealed up tight. Most people who go out to mine sites have no interest in entering the mines. The ones that do, are few in number. Thus the dilemma; do you spend millions to keep the minority safe?, can the cost of these safeguard projects be justified?.  Some people are driven to enter mines,  the mines at Socorro West were sealed, yet the  iron gates were breached by someone using a cutting torch, it takes a determined individual to haul a cutting rig to a mine in order to gain access.