Old hydroelectric power plant in the high desert of Nevada

darronb · Apr 21, 2018

My girlfriend Zoe bought a large (365 acre) parcel in Golconda, Nevada last year, mainly for the hot springs that are on the property.

Earlier today, I stumbled upon the remains of a small hydroelectric power plant on the property. I don't know how old it is, but it may have been built to supply power to a tungsten ore processing plant that was also on the property, and whose remains can still be found. The Tungsten plant was in operation from about 1939 to shortly after WWII.

The penstock(s) and a turbine still remain. All other equipment is gone or still hidden under the debris.

I will post some photos here to assist in ID.

Thanks,
Darron and Zoe in Golconda, Nevada (15 miles east of Winnemucca on I80)

darronb · Apr 21, 2018

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darronb · Apr 21, 2018

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darronb · Apr 21, 2018

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darronb · Apr 21, 2018

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darronb · Apr 21, 2018

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darronb · Apr 22, 2018

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darronb · Apr 22, 2018

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darronb · Apr 22, 2018

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cyanidekid · Apr 22, 2018

nice, post some pics of the tungsten plant, if it is still there, too.

also, can you tell us how you post the full size pics?

m-lud · Apr 22, 2018

That u shaped frame laying upside down next to the pump is what they bolt those military 6x6 engines to when they ship them inside those sealed containers. The containers are built with a O ring seal between the two halves and has a valve so they can be either pumped to vacume or purged with inert gas to prevent condensation. A very expensive container to ship an engine. I guess shipping overseas it would need to keep the engines good.

on another forum I use ,I learned to get the large pictures you size the picture as close to the Kb allowed by the forum. You need to use paint or another picture sizing program.

There is some money in scrap iron out there. Call a local scraper and they will do the work and pay you for the steel.

dkmc · Apr 22, 2018

Hum, interesting.
Strictly curious, exactly how much are the property taxes on a 365 acre chunk of Nevada like that?

m-lud · Apr 22, 2018

They may have used the military engine to run the pump.

darronb · Apr 22, 2018

dkmc said:
Hum, interesting.
Strictly curious, exactly how much are the property taxes on a 365 acre chunk of Nevada like that?

I just checked the Humboldt county website. I was mistaken on the area- the three APNs add up to 345 acres, not 365. Total property taxes for the three APNs last time were $499.66, annually. This will likely go up because the purchase price was somewhat higher than the last one from several years ago.

You can buy small lots right in town for a few hundred dollars, with annual taxes in the $5-$10 range.

This property has changed hands numerous times in the 150+ years that it has been in private hands. It has a vast and largely forgotten history, involving the Immigrant/California Trail, early homesteading, canals, irrigation, ranching, livestock, orchards, agriculture, The Transcontinental Railroad (which passes by, yards away from our 1900-vintage all-concrete house), 100 years of hot springs tourism.

There is also a large-diameter and LONG-distance buried clay piping system to distribute spring water to pools at the long-burned Hot Springs hotel, the orchards, a large reservoir (which is the headwater for the hydro plant), at least one other building (an 1860s-vintage adobe house on Zoe's land, still in quite good condition).

Previously mentioned is the tungsten ore processing to help prosecute WWII. There are also HUGE piles of copper slag leftover from a failed copper smelter from the 1897-1910 era, and no doubt much more that we haven't learned yet.

Darron

The adobe house, as seen not long before Zoe bought the property:

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darronb · Apr 22, 2018

mllud22 said:
They may have used the military engine to run the pump.

All evidence so far suggests that this was a hydroelectric station, not a pumping station.
It's in a place that would make pumping pointless- there's no source, and discharge would be into the downhill end of a very long canal

Darron

Lanso · Apr 22, 2018

Really curious about your concrete house, are the walls poured in forms vertical, horizontal and then tilted up or concrete block?

darronb · Apr 22, 2018

cyanidekid said:
nice, post some pics of the tungsten plant, if it is still there, too.

also, can you tell us how you post the full size pics?

I'll be posting tungsten plant photos soon.

As to the photos-

Step 1) Resize your photos to an appropriate size. I'm not sure what the rules are here, but I selected 1024 pixels wide for the images above.

Step 2) Upload your photos to a web server. This means that once the photos are on the server, you can get a specific URL to paste into the Practical Machinist post editing tool.

Step 3) When creating a post, place you blinking cursor in the part of the post where you want to place the photo.

Step 4) Click on the "Insert Image" icon in the posting tool. It's the one above the big red H here:

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Step 5) When the window pops up, select the "From URL" tab.

Step 6) Paste the URL of your image into the URL field. You may or may not have to uncheck the "Retrieve remote file and reference locally" checkbox.

Step 7) Click OK. Done!

My images are hosted on Microsoft OneDrive, a service I pay an annual fee for. I have to use the "Embed" function on the OneDrive website to generate a URL that can be used elsewhere, such as here on PM. OneDrive has a handy feature in the Embed function where I can select the image resolution I want to present through the URL. This way, I can upload full res. images to OneDrive (which is SUPER easy), and select resolution as desired for each place I want to post to.

A free Microsoft account gives you a moderate amount of cloud storage (15GB?), but I'm not if embedding is allowed through a free account. I pay my annual fee and get five 1,000GB (1 Terabyte) cloud storage accounts, and usage of the full Microsoft Office suite.

Darron

Milland · Apr 22, 2018

The picture in #14 is amazing, it's almost painterly for the hut and landscape, then there's the jarring neon yellow automobile. Quite a composition.

Also amazing is how cheap the land and taxes are out there. I'm paying ~$8K/yr for one acre and a small steel building. Maybe it's time for a move...

cyanidekid · Apr 22, 2018

Thanks Darron, that’s a beautiful shot of the adobe house, is that raw data or did you process it to get the “end of the world” look from the ominous sky?

Yes, I post pics all the time straight from my phone, but didn’t know to use a cloud source.

Does anyone use iCloud to do that, what’s the good way to do that?

Milland · Apr 22, 2018

cyanidekid said:
Thanks Darron, that’s a beautiful shot of the adobe house, is that raw data or did you process it to get the “end of the world” look from the ominous sky?

We had the same thought, just seconds apart. My grandad was an artist, a painter, and I have a number of his works. Many landscapes, and when he was doing Southwest-inspired paintings, this shot would have been great for style and composition. Maybe without the car...

Old hydroelectric power plant in the high desert of Nevada

Aluminum

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Titanium

Stainless

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Cast Iron

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