Blackstone

This mining town is nestled in a steep-sided canyon of dark grey granite. During wet weather, a slender waterfall, nearly 500 feet high, spills glittering water into the canyon in a once-crystalline lake. The mines of Blackstone bore into the canyon walls all around the town. Some of these tunnel entrances, several hundred feet up sheer walls of granite, are reached only by the most precarious of trails. Others, near the top of the wall, can only be entered by those first taking the steep switchbacks of the main trail up the side of the canyon. The miners then circle the rim to a point over their mine entrance. There they are lowered over the edge with huge cranes.