Featured Mining Town: Red Mountain Town, Colorado
Red Mountain Town was the center of the second most important silver district in Colorado, yet it never achieved the greatness or permanence of camps in even lesser districts. Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Virginia City, Nevada
Virginia City, was settled at the site of what was the single most valuable ore discovery in the West, the Comstock Lode. The city would quickly become one of the largest and most important in the western territories, and would prompt the federal government to rush Nevada into statehood. Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Rhyolite, Nevada
Rhyolite, Nevada was the most dramatic example of the rise and fall of a mining boom town. In Just two years a city of up to 10,000 people rose out of the desert, only to be abandoned just a couple years later. Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Ouray, Colorado
Ouray, Colorado is widely regarded as one of Americas most beautiful towns. Although the town was built by mining, it was the spectacular beauty of the area that gave Ouray long life as a tourist destination. Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Rawhide, Nevada
Rawhide was a mining town that exemplifies many of the towns which sprang up in Nevada during the silver and gold rushes in the state's history. Rawhide was less a town born on the actual finding of large silver or gold deposits, and more on the manipulation of greed and desire for "the next big thing". Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Georgetown, Colorado
Georgetown, Colorado was settled after the discovery of gold in 1859. The town would ultimately become the center of a major silver district and Colorados most important mining town in the 1870s. Today, Georgetown is one of the best preserved Victorian-era mining towns in the West. Continue Reading
Central Idaho’s Yankee Fork Gold Dredge
Located adjacent to the Idaho ghost town of Bonanza, on a tributary of the Salmon River, is the idle Yankee Fork Gold Dredge. The dredge is described as the largest in Idaho, and one of the best-preserved dredges in the West. Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Empire, Colorado
Settled in 1860, Empire is one of the oldest mining camps in Colorado. The town was the site of a local boom with the 1862 discovery of the Tenth Legion mine Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: St. Elmo, Colorado
St. Elmo, originally named Forest City, was settled near the Mary Murphy Mine in the late 1870s. The town thrived during the 1880s as the local mines employed hundreds of men and were producing millions of dollars a year in gold and silver. Continue Reading
Featured Mining Town: Marble, Colorado
A world-class deposit of marble was discovered in a remote section of Colorado wilderness in 1873. The discovery was made at what would become known as the Crystal River Valley, one of Colorado's most spectacular locations. The town of Marble would be settled in the valley below the marble deposit, but not until many years later. Continue Reading