Photos by Tristan Savatier

New Idria is a ghost town located in a remote area of the Diablo Range of California, outside of Hollister. It was once a center for mercury (quick silver) and asbestos mining. New Idria was at its peak well before the Gold Rush in California of the 1840s and 60s. There are still high levels of mercury and asbestos polution in the area.

New Idria Poker Runs

If you don't mind ignoring all the No Trespasing posted signs, you can visit an amazing mercury smelter with four large Gould rotary furnances. This smelter was abandoned in the 1970's. All those photos were taken in May 2004.

Overland Bound New Idria Ghost Town Run February 2019. It had only been a few short months since we had joined the world wide Overland Bound Community, and we had big plans to build out our new 4Runner which we purchased almost immediately after a mechanical failure in Death Valley with our previous vehicle. San Tran Poker Run 2018 Panoche Hills - Duration: 14:38. Ozzy714 Outdoors 1,710 views. New Idria - Kate Woods Interview - Duration: 4:55. DGalloProductions 1,508 views.

It is not recommended to drink the bright orange water from the streams in this area, but cattle don't have problems grazing in the nearby fields. Scary! The orange color is said to be iron oxide, not toxic mercury oxide.

Equipment used: Sony DSC F828 (8 Mega-pixel) with 4GB Microdrive.

For more information you can visit the New Idria Preservation Project (www.new-idria.org).

UPDATE: New Idria is now inaccessible! As of May 2008, approximately 31,000 acres of the Clear Creek Management Area, which includes New Idria, has been CLOSED by order of the Bureau of Land Management, with official reason stating the danger of the naturally-occurring asbestos in the soil. The road leading to New Idria is gated and locked approximately one mile from the townsite, and area is being patrolled by state officials - they will arrest or cite you for trespassing. You can find out more information at www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/hollister/clear_creek_management_... for the most up-to-date news and information.

• Gene C planned this short run to show off a word-of-mouth suggestion he'd gotten on checking out a local modern-day ghost town south of Hollister. The New Idria ghost town run - RBC Dune Buggy.
• A Poker Run is an event where boat enthusiasts ride boats to multiple checkpoints to collect poker cards. In the meantime, it is time to show off your boats speed, aesthetic, and overall performance. Some of the hottest, fastest, most exotic boats participate all over the United States to play a chance to win.

If you are also interested by urban exploration, i.e. exploring disused buildings and factories, abandoned tunnels, etc, check out www.urban-resources.net, an excellent database of photography books and other resources on this subject.

We've all done it. Signed up for a poker run, get three cards in and have a crap hand and lose all enthusiasm for the remainder of the ride.

Now, honestly if you sign up for a charity poker run with the expectation of winning and coming out ahead, then you're probably doing it for the wrong reason. But, from a competitive spirit kind of thing, we all hate to lose and it's even worse when halfway through the game you know there's no way you can win.

That's why we like a slight variation on this old standard..the POKER CHIP RUN.

What makes this game better than a standard 5 card poker run is NOBODY has a clue if they have a good hand or a bad hand until they return to the starting point.

That helps you (as the event organizer) in several ways. The first is the majority of your participants will enjoy the event all the way through, you'll ensure that almost everyone will return to the start (instead of dropping out halfway) and the old 'I don't know how to play poker' excuse some people use for not attending your event.

How it works

The poker chip run is the simplest run you can set up. Here's what you need to do.

1. Decide on the number of stops you will have. Typically you can have as many as 5 or as few as three. If you're short on volunteers to man your stops, then we recommend having only 1 additional stop someone along the route. This gives you 3 draws from the poker chip bag. One when they register and before they leave, one at the stop out on the route, and one when they return to the starting point.

Get a set of generic poker chips, or contact Custom Products Plus (478-299-4601) for custom printed chips.

Divide the chips into equal numbers in a opaque bag so your participants can't see which color they're getting.

At each stop have your participants draw out 3 chips. Then note the colors drawn on their registration sheet.

That's it. Pretty simple huh?

Oh yea, once everyone leaves for the run, or (preferably) once everyone is back in and all the sheets have been returned, stage a public drawing where you put 1 chip of each color in the bag and have a volunteer reach into the bag and blindly draw out a chip. The first chip drawn is worth 20 points, the second chip is worth 10 points and the third chip is worth 5 points.

For example, if the first chip drawn is red, then every red chip drawn on the ride is worth 20 points. If the second chip is white then all the white chips are worth 10 points and the blue chips were worth 5 points.

New Idria Poker Run Game

The beauty of this is that because the value of the chips wasn't established until AFTER the ride concluded, no one knew if they had a good hand or not. They could've had all blue chips, or all red chips or all white chips and they either won big, or was a big loser!

Just make sure the person blind drawing the chips has no way to tell which color is which when they're in the bag and that person doesn't know anything about the participants scores or who has what colors on their sheets.

But if it's a blind draw, it's still pretty hard for anyone to cheat with this system.

New Idria Poker Run Results

If you have questions, or need more info, call us at Biker Nation, 478-268-7528 and we'll be happy to answer any questions about this system. We've used this dozens of times and it works great!