On the corner of Central Avenue and Poplar Street in downtown Bayard, New Mexico, the Bayard Mining Park commemorates Grant County miners with a collection of mining equipment and educational plaques. While the park does not warrant a trip in and of itself, the park, like a fine wine, is paired nicely with a trip…
Perched on an overlook above the historic mining town of Butte, Montana, are the commemorative bricks and engraved plaques of the Granite Mountain Memorial. It pays tribute to the survivors of hard rock mining’s greatest disaster: the Granite Mountain-Speculator Fire of June 8, 1917. The 168 men lost in the fire along with 2,500 Butte men lost from mining related causes between 1879 and 1983 are commemorated at this grand and educational outlook.
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.
