Places of interest located in North America.
Today, Ballarat is a ghost town known better for its cameo in Easy Rider or visits from the Manson Family than its early mining history. Yet, from 1897 to 1917, Ballarat was the trade hub for the rich gold and silver diggings on the western slope of the Panamint Range.
The Crystal Gold Mine is one of the first hard rock mines in Silver Valley, Idaho. It is a remarkably preserved example of mining in the 1880s. The original ore cart, tracks, tools. and many gold laden quartz veins remain in place thanks to the mine’s surprising history.
The Wallace District Mining Museum celebrates 130 years of silver, lead, zinc, and gold mining in the “Silver Capital of the World” and the Coeur d’Alene Mining District.
As the “Silver Capital of the World,” Wallace, Idaho is awash in silver mining history sites. The most accessible of these is visible from Interstate 90, sharing a lot with the Wallace Chamber of Commerce. The ambiguously named “Silver History Site” is a public park dotted with mining equipment. The exhibit’s head frame, stamp mill, ore car, drills, bits, and even a closed tunnel is capped off with a statue of a miner with his wife and child, dedicated to all miners and their families.
While Death Valley has had its share of gold and silver mines, the “White Gold of the Desert” has proven to be the deserts most profitable mineral. Borax mines and related facilities are dotted across the valley yet the Harmony Borax Works and interpretive trail is the primary attraction for visitors.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park319 2nd Ave SSeattle, WA 98104 Hours Tuesday – Sunday: 10AM-5PM Admission Free Discover “The Gateway to the Gold Fields” of Canada’s Yukon Territory at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. The museum offers an overview of the Klondike Gold Rush while highlighting how Seattle becomes the main provision…
Historic downtown Weaverville is host to massive mining equipment, delicate gold nugget necklaces, and the only working steam powered stamp mill on the west coast—all preserved by the Trinity County Jake Jackson Museum. The museum is dedicated to the preservation of and education on the history of Trinity County. Of course, no history of the region would be complete without a deep dive into its early mining origins. The museum collection includes mining equipment, assaying scales, gold nuggets, and other artifacts from the historic county.
Central City, like many settlements in the area, owes its existence to the shiny yellow metal that can drive ambitious men to the ends of the earth. The Pike’s Peak Gold Rush was already in full swing when John H. Gregory discovered a gold bearing vein in Gregory Gulch in May 6, 1859. What came to be known as the Gregory Lode soon joined the Bates, Gunnel, Kansas, and Burroghs veins, discovered in the following two months. Prospectors flocked to the site. By, 1860 an estimated 10,000 prospectors ascended to the growing settlement known as Mountain City.
The Gold Nugget Museum in downtown Paradise, California preserves and protects the rich mining history of the Ridge. The museum is named after a 54-pound gold nugget discovered in 1859. The “Dogtown Nugget” or “Magalia Nugget” was found a few miles outside of Paradise, in historic Dogtown. The nugget drew a stampede of miners who first settled the region and whose triumphs and challenges are commemorated in the Gold Nugget Museum.
Sitting in the Klamath foothills, 6-miles west of Redding, California. is a row of half-ruined buildings flanking highway 299. These are the remains of the gold rush boomtown of Shasta, the “Queen City of the Northern Mines.” While its rise to relevance and fall into obsolescence is swift, it is a striking and well preserved reminder of gold rush that put the state of California on the map.
