Burro Schmidt Tunnel

BRING A FLASHLIGHT!!! The "hike" through the tunnel is 0.5 miles to the outlet (1.0 mile round trip).  The famous Burro Schmidt Tunnel was built by William Henry "Burro" Schmidt for transporting copper ore but was never used. It is located in the El Paso Mountains of the Mojave Desert. He alone used hand tools and dynamite to dig the tunnel over 38 years, finishing in 1938. It was intended to create a short cut so that he could avoid the dangerous ridge between his mining claim and the smelter in Mojave. In 1920 a rod was completed that eliminated the need for the tunnel but like a man possessed he dug on. By 1938 he had achieved his "goal", having dug through nearly 2,500 feet (760 m) of solid granite using only a pick, a shovel, and a four-pound hammer for the initial section, and carefully placed dynamite with notoriously short fuses for the majority portion. It was estimated that he had moved 5,800 tons (5,260 metric tonnes) of rock with just a wheelbarrow[4] to complete his work.[citation needed] Schmidt never used the tunnel to move his mine's ore. Instead, he sold the tunnel to another miner and moved away. A Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon celebrated the feat, calling him the human mole. Schmidt's cabin, down below in Garlock, has been largely abandoned and stands as it was in the 1930s, preserved by the dry climate