Thomas Alva Edison famous for inventing the light bulb

One of the first places I will write about was one of our first adventures of the summer. We came across this set of mines on a run in local mountains, after some research we found out we came across the old Edison Mines. In the late 1800's Thomas Alva Edison had opened these set of mines and many others, the mines were used to get cheap iron out they could use for furnaces used inside housing. The workers of the Edison mines actually had it pretty good back in the day, it was one of the first places to give electricity to the workers home and it was how the area first had started to become populated. Back in the day when the mine was still operational there also stood a mill and a processing plant not to far away. The mines are located in the Sparta Mountain Wildlife area, once you find the opening there is a tribute to Thomas Edison, as soon as you walk onto the trail you will come upon your first shaft. Please be careful there are fences up around the mines don't fool around it will cause serious harm and some of the holes you will not be able to get out.

Many of the caves or shafts that we had found had been flooded over, slowly over time collecting water. Most were not accessible to people.

There is a fence around the deep holes for people's protecting, I advise if you want a closer look to make sure you are not on the lip of the drop it is loose gravel. We think this deep hole was used as one of the old elevator shafts, we aren't completely positive however.

This mine that was low to the ground was accesible to crawl in although there are pictures of us inside of it I would not reccomend it. It is very narrow and over 100 years old and could fall at anytime. The cave came to an end about 100 feet into the end.