The Sierra Silver Mine just north of Wallace, Idaho, while a poor silver producer finds new life as an educational hotspot where tourists learn the history of Idaho’s richest mining district, view demonstrations of hard-rock mining, and see samples of regional ore.
Silver was discovered in Cerro Gordo (“Fat Hill”) in 1865 by Pablo Flores – the first major silver strike in Owens Valley and a defining feature of the Lone Pine Mining District. Today, it is a privately held mining ghost town outside of Lone Pine, California. It is infused with history and accessible by a rough dirt road.
Lode mining. Quartz mining. Hard rock mining. Call it what you will, the practice of extracting ore from stone is one of the most difficult, dangerous, and expensive forms of mining.
Sitting in the heart of historic Leadville, Colorado, the Heritage Museum and Gallery pays homage to the history of the 1880s silver boomtown. The museum is housed in Leadville’s first library built in 1904 with funds from Andrew Carnegie. The library became host to the museum in 1971 when it was acquired by the Lake County Civic Center Association
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.
Some people get so excited about visiting the site of the original shootout at the OK Corral that they forget what it was silver that drew so many wild and adventurous characters to Tombstone. Yet, the silver mines of this town were, in their own right, the stuff of legend. The town itself is named…
While many fixate of gold, that is not to overlook that there have been many notable silver rushes. One particularly notable deposit, which fueled a mining industry from the 1860s to the 1950s was found in Park City, Utah. The Park City Museum commemorates the industry that established the city and set it as a lure for wealth and success.
New challenges could be in the works for prospectors on Bureau of Land Management claims. Yesterday, February 2, 2015, The BLM posted the Obama Administration’s proposed 2016 budget for the Bureau of Land Management. While the press release highlights conservation and renewable energy priorities, nestled deep in the budget are some unpleasant surprises for miners…
