I Found Forgotten Mines in a Utah Ghost Town

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]There are many ghost towns and abandoned mines in northern Utah from the mining rush in the late 1800s.

[00:00:08]And today I'm out here looking for the remnants of a town called Joy. But instead, I find myself.

[00:00:18]No, I'm just kidding. I I found the town.

[00:00:26]I don't think it's too deep into the desert here. maybe 6 or 7 miles on this dirt road. So, shouldn't be too bad getting to it. But back in the 1800s, hey, this is a lot worse. Anyway, just driving down the road here. We're getting there. All right. I think I found a pretty good camping spot. No wind right now. Really open. And I'm actually next to a spring here at the town of Joy. Well, the ghost town of Joy, obviously. And this is called Larair Spring. And it's kind of interesting because the person who is most remembered in history in the town of Joy isn't a minor, isn't the person who established the town. It's a person named No-Noss Maggie. Her name was actually Mary Leair, but that's who the spring is named after, Mary Leair. Her name is No-Noss Maggie because she used to work in a lot of saloons back in the 1800s. And apparently she got in a big bar fight and she was hit in the nose with a beer bottle or something and it completely disfigured her face. Yeah, talk about the worst nickname ever. No, Maggie. But I'm actually walking up to Lar Spring next to where Maggie lived.

[00:01:26]So, let's go check this out. Oh, yeah.

[00:01:28]This is still running. I mean, this is crazy. We're We're pretty isolated out here. I don't know how far we are. Maybe 30 miles from the nearest town out in the desert here. And we have a spring.

[00:01:37]No wonder they actually establish a town out here.

[00:01:41]Yeah. You can see the the pool here from the stream. And it trickles out of this right the base of that mountain. Yeah, it just goes straight down there. Really interesting to think about. There used to be a lot of people around here. I mean, not a ton, but people relied on this spring for water for their horses, cattle, them. It's just weird that 100 plus years later, I'm just looking at it. On the topic of no faced, no faced.

[00:02:08]On the topic of no-n nose Maggie, she had a house right by the spring. And it looks like there's a remnant of a structure here, a stone structure on the left. So, I'm making my way over there.

[00:02:20]Let's go check it out.

[00:02:26]Yeah, definitely a structure right here.

[00:02:28]Wondering if this was Maggie's house. I mean, it's been over a hundred years since anybody's actually lived here.

[00:02:37]So, it looks like it was established right here. You can see how it's kind of piled up right there with the rocks. But this one's pretty fallen right here, but it looks like one big room. And then right next to it, you have this, which is a lot more established. I mean, to a point, obviously, but look at the back wall here.

[00:02:59]Still put together pretty well. I mean, considering the age of it, still held together. Still breaking the wind here, but nature's just taken over this place.

[00:03:08]This is where NoS Maggie lived. Oh, I'm looking up there. It looks like I see a entrance to a mine. Kind of like a small mine. Going to go walk up there and check it out while I'm here. And yeah, I'm just camping right across the way right there. So, it's perfect place just to sleep where no-nosed Maggie was.

[00:03:26]Anyway, let me let me hike up this and see what this is all about. I'm still just walking up. It's actually right behind me. But finding some old remnants of the mine here. Don't want to grab it too much. Don't want to get tetanus.

[00:03:40]Bunch of rusted things kind of scattered about here. All right, we're almost up there.

[00:03:44]>> Mine entrances dot all of these hills if you're looking for them. Some shallow and some deep, if you know what I mean.

[00:03:52]All right, here we are. Oh, yeah. This is definitely a mine.

[00:03:57]It's all uh it's all closed off now.

[00:04:04]Yeah, it doesn't go that deep. Just maybe 6 8 ft back there.

[00:04:15]All right, let me show you where I'm at just so you can get the bearings of what I'm seeing here. So, obviously the mine is right behind me looking forward.

[00:04:23]Maggie's house is right there and that's Lair Spring right there. So, he's living right next to it with a mine right behind him. And there's a lot of small ghost towns here in Utah because in the late 1800s, bunch of people came out looking for copper, silver, gold, all kinds of metals. And what they would do is set up a claim and then they would poke around into different rock formations just to see what the veins were like. Sometimes they were good, sometimes they were bad, sometimes they would quickly run out. So that's a similar story to this ghost town. It was established, people moved here, not just people who were mining, but people who worked in the saloons, you know, doctors, whatever, right? There were other people here. So when the mining went away, when the veins ran out or it wasn't good enough for people to come out here in such an isolated spot, people like Maggie would stick around and try to survive. So that's why she was the last person here. But I see on the other side by my truck is maybe a couple other structures. I see a small mine further back. So there's all kinds of stuff here to explore. Yeah, let's check those other things out. And maybe we'll take a dip in the old spring. Huh.

[00:05:34]That's a terrible idea. Found some type of structure here right below the spring.

[00:05:41]Looks like something maybe they fill up with water for cattle or something. Lost to time like a lot of things out here.

[00:05:47]Oh, went across the road here to another structure similar to what we saw with Maggie's over there. Kind of a square with rocks piled up, but they've all tumbled down by now.

[00:05:59]Yeah, the road's right there. This is that structure. Maggie's is right across. And then the spring is right there.

[00:06:08]Ah, the desert. Just hanging out by old Maggie's place here. Oh, no Maggie. Old Maggie lair. It's pretty barren out here, I'll tell you. Pretty nice though.

[00:06:22]Nice to get away from all the noise.

[00:06:24]Literally all the noise. There's no noise out here at all. Really just me and my thoughts, I guess. And no knows Maggie. She's here in spirit, obviously.

[00:06:34]Yeah. Just trying to get a feel of what it felt like to be out here. Yeah. I think I'm just going to put the camera away for a couple hours here. get some maybe some drone shots and stuff and we're going to explore more or at least try to find some more stuff tomorrow.

[00:06:49]But today we were successful in finding no knows Maggie's place and her spring which is super cool.

[00:07:00]I took some time to relax on this peaceful evening, but for some reason I decided that hiking the small mountain behind Maggie's place would be a good idea.

[00:07:12]I don't know if this was a good idea or a bad idea, but we're about to find out. Beautiful evening to do this, though. See what's in front of me here.

[00:07:22]Still got to go way up there.

[00:07:25]Let's give myself time to breathe here.

[00:07:32]Everything is shale. Like you put one foot down, it goes down two feet. And then behind me, it's just a pure scramble up.

[00:07:42]Going to call it there, but I'll give you the view here.

[00:07:50]And I have to actually figure out how I'm going to get down cuz scrambling up was very difficult. I'll go to the left here and see what happens.

[00:08:08]That was fun. Kind of a waste of time, but good to get the body moving. We're either going to have an amazing sunset or nothing at all. Hopefully, it's amazing.

[00:08:21]Oh my god. Sun's going down. We're just going to chill for the rest of the night. Yeah. Look at that desert sunset.

[00:08:28]H. It's only going to get better, too. I think I'm going to make some beans.

[00:08:33]Well, it's chili, but has beans in it.

[00:08:36]Here we go.

[00:08:38]Some chili with beans. Let's do this.

[00:08:44]Feel like this is something, you know, they would have had back then. Beans and something. Beans and meat. Out in the desert eating beans.

[00:08:58]All right. Got some chips. Some beans m. Oh, that's so good. Out here in the desert. It's getting dark eating some hot chili. What more can you ask for, right? I'm going to eat this and then get ready for bed.

[00:09:23]All right. In the back of my truck going to bed. I'll see you in the morning.

[00:09:28]>> Good morning.

[00:09:31]Check out the sun over here.

[00:09:38]Little chilly out there. Not too bad.

[00:09:39]Slept pretty well.

[00:09:42]Oh, freaking turned my neck all weird and that hurt. All right. Well, I'm up.

[00:09:48]Really nice morning right now. Going to get up and that's all. Going to get up.

[00:09:53]All right. Good morning. It's a lovely morning right now. See behind me, the sun's just barely rising there.

[00:10:01]Absolutely beautiful, though.

[00:10:05]It's cool how the sun's coming up right in that little bowl right there, right at the bottom of it. I'm going to get the drone out because I see a couple places where I think there's some mines, but they're a little higher up. So, I want to fly the drone. Check those out.

[00:10:20]And I think there's some bigger mining operation by the actual town of Joy. Joy is the ghost town. There's really not much left of the actual town. It's just kind of some crossroads there and some mining operation still left. But, but yeah, I do see something up that mountain right over there, kind of on the side of it. So, I'll put the drone up and check it out.

[00:11:15]Wow. I think I just found a mine that just goes straight down into the ground.

[00:11:20]I didn't see really a bottom to it. I mean, obviously there's a bottom to it, but it's basically halfway up those little mountain hills right there.

[00:11:27]Checking out all them veins and them hills. You know what I mean? Anyway, let's get a little closer over there and check out more of these hidden little mine shafts.

[00:11:42]Okay, I went up that side road and parked. I see a mine right here.

[00:11:46]Actually, it's pretty hikable. It's just right right up there. Let's check it out. What a beautiful morning.

[00:11:53]I mean, how many people are waking up early and looking for mine shafts? Not many. I'm sure there's a handful out there right now somewhere in the world.

[00:12:12]Uh, that one goes in probably 20 ft or so. I'm not going into any of these guys. I mean, they're old. I'm alone.

[00:12:21]There's the entrance right there.

[00:12:27]Wow. It's getting pretty windy. But while I'm up here, I'm going to hike to the top and just have a gander around.

[00:12:34]See what's up here. See what we can find.

[00:12:37]Yeah. Being up on top here, I can kind of see little mines that we just saw or little entrances to mines everywhere dotting all these hills right here.

[00:12:47]All right, let's get back to my truck.

[00:12:49]But man, it's beautiful out here.

[00:12:52]All right, enough poking around in these hills. I'm gonna go to the actual Joy Township area, the ghost town. There's not much left. I don't think there's anything left of the town, but I believe there are some mining structures. So, I'm going to try to find those. So, let's get going. I don't know if you saw on the drone, but I was flying to a mine entrance, and I think I saw a packrat in the mine kind of running around.

[00:13:15]Hopefully, you can see it on the camera.

[00:13:17]So, I'm just going to walk over here to that mine entrance not too far away from my truck. And, you know, hopefully it was just a packrat and not a mountain lion or something. So, okay, here I am.

[00:13:26]Going to walk up to it. All right, animal. Don't kill me, please. I'm here.

[00:13:31]I'm here. Oh, yeah. Doesn't go that far.

[00:13:34]Whatever that animal is.

[00:13:37]Sure. It's a packrat just living right in there. Pretty cute. And I'm pretty much where the township of joy was back in the late 1800s. And things ran dry in the early 1900s. Like I mentioned before, everybody slowly left. And the last person in the town was No Maggie, who eventually left to the town of Eureka, which is one of the mining towns that survived in Utah. You know, a lot of these ghost towns didn't survive because the isolation or, you know, just a combination of the mines weren't very good, too isolated, not enough water, too hard to get out here, etc. Right?

[00:14:17]So, some survived, some didn't. But you can see the roads. You can see the crossroads where the township was, and the roads are still pretty good, actually. A lot of people come out here for off-roading and camping. And there's a lot to kind of find if you want to find it. A lot of mine entrances. I've seen probably 10 to 15 mine entrances just with the naked eye. So, they did a lot of work here trying to make it work.

[00:14:40]I'm standing in the crossroads of what was the mining town of Joy. Now, it's just a desert. But, there was a lot of activity here back in the day. Really, nothing's left except for No Maggie's place, which we saw. And here's an unmarked grave. I'm not sure if it's a grave, but I do know that there was a grave of a 19-year-old who died. And I'm not actually sure when, but this kind of marks the township of joy right here.

[00:15:05]Really cool just to come out to these areas and see what's left. See if I can find any hidden remnants of stories that are lost to history. And the town of Joy was established in 1872 by a man named Harry Joy. He was from Detroit, Michigan. And I guess he was establishing the Detroit mining district here in Utah. This one didn't obviously work out, but you know, a lot of ambitious people came out to the desert of Utah and, you know, Colorado, California, and tried to make it big, finding gold, finding silver, finding copper, whatever they could find. And it was a big boom in the late 1800s. You can find a lot of ghost towns and mines.

[00:15:45]But as I stand here in the middle of the intersection of the ghost town of Joy, I think we'll end it there. And if you guys enjoy these adventures, feel free to give the video a thumbs up and go ahead and subscribe to the channel. I'm going to be releasing a video every Wednesday. I'm basically finding hidden historical places in Utah and doing a video about those with all the information that I can gather, making it an adventure to come out and find these places. So, really appreciate it, guys.

[00:16:14]I'm going to get out of here. Enjoy the drive out and I'll see you in the next one.

[00:16:22]Peace.