Mining

The Cerro Colorado Mountains are a low mountain range in southern Pima County, Arizona, USA. The highest point of the range is (5,319 feet (1,621 m)). The range consists of a NNW–SSE trending ridge with several shorter ridges extending off the main ridge to the ENE. The higher portions of the range cover an area of about 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi), with dimensions of 6.8 km (4.2 mi) by 4.0 km...

The Georgetown–Silver Plume National Historic Landmark District is a federally designated United States National Historic Landmark that comprises the Town of Georgetown, the Town of Silver Plume, and the Georgetown Loop Historic Mining & Railroad Park between the two silver mining towns along Clear Creek in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Clear Creek County, Colorado, United...

In 1879, prospectors searching for another Leadville were led to the Aspen area by geological maps that showed outcrops of Leadville Limestone. They found silver ore on Aspen Mountain, but ore production was small until the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad reached the town in 1887 and provided economic shipment of ore to smelters. Ore occurs in the Mississippian Leadville Limestone and the lower...

Caribou is a former silver-mining town, now a ghost town near Nederland in Boulder County, Colorado, United States. It was named after the Caribou silver mine nearby. The Caribou Ranch recording studio is several miles away, on the road from Nederland up to Caribou.

History

1861 to 1969

A prospector named Conger discovered placer gold downstream from Caribou in 1861. He eventually followed the...

Silver veins were discovered in the Central City-Idaho Springs district a short time after gold was discovered there in 1859. However, mining the silver veins was delayed for the most part until smelters were built in the late 1860s. The veins of the district are zoned in a roughly concentric manner, with gold-bearing pyrite veins in the center, and silver-bearing galena veins more common in...

Champion Mill, in Lake County, Colorado, is part of a mining complex on the eastern slope of Mount Champion on Halfmoon Creek. Established in the 1890s, it was a consistent supplier of gold and silver, as well as galena and pyrite to the smelters in Leadville, CO. The mine and mill operated until around 1919, when the price to ship the ore to Leadville became too expensive to maintain a profit.

Creede was the last silver boom town in Colorado in the 19th century. The town leapt from a population of 600 in 1889 to more than 10,000 people in December 1891. The Creede mines operated continuously from 1890 until 1985, and were served by the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad.

The original townsite of Creede was located on East Willow Creek just above its junction with West Willow Creek. Below...

Silver was discovered in the Gilman mining district in 1878 or 1879. As the deeper sulfide ores were reached, the miners found that the ore contained so much zinc that the smelters refused to buy it. A roaster and magnetic separator were installed in 1905 to separate out the zinc minerals, turning the problem into an asset. The mining operations transitioned increasingly to zinc, although the...

Gold was discovered in the area in late 1859, during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. However the initial discovery, where California Gulch empties into the Arkansas River, was not rich enough to cause excitement. On April 26, 1860, Abe Lee made a rich discovery of placer gold in California Gulch, about a mile east of Leadville, and Oro City was founded at the new diggings. By July 1860 the gold...

The Cliff mine was the first successful copper mine in the Copper Country of the state of Michigan in the United States. The mine is at the now-abandoned town of Clifton in Keweenaw County. Mining began in 1845, and the Cliff was the most productive copper mine in the United States from 1845 through 1854. Large-scale mining stopped in 1878.

The Cliff mined a fissure vein of native copper in...