Abandoned Adit and Ball Mill

I am back on the road again, on my way to southwestern Nevada - just a short 4 hour drive.  

I have passed this abandoned adit and ball mill many times in my adventures, but have never stopped to photograph it.  

OK - so what's an adit and what is a ball mill? 

Very simply, an adit is a horizontal shaft into a hill or side of a mountain in order to mine the gold ore and bring it back out.  Inside it might be connected to a downward shaft or more adits in different directions.  

A ball mill is a facility where the rock is crushed and pulverized so that solutions can be added to the pulverized rock to extract the metal.  

This particular adit and ball mill were likely in production about 100 years ago, perhaps a little longer.  I am not sure to the mining history of this area in particular.  

The history of mining is an important part of the history of Nevada and much of the western US.  And it is an important part of our current heritage.