Mines and Museums

The Cerro Vanguardia Mine is a gold and silver mine located 150 km north west of Puerto San Julián, in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. It is majority-owned and operated by AngloGold Ashanti, which holds a 92.5% interest in the mine . The remaining 7.5% are owned by Formicruz (Fomento Minero de Santa Cruz Sociedad del Estado), a company owned by the province of Santa Cruz.

In 2008, the...

Potosí was founded as a mining town in 1546, while Bolivia was still part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Over the next 200 years, more than 40,000 tons of silver were shipped out of the town, making the Spanish Empire one of the richest the world had ever seen. But such vast wealth also came at a price. Thousands of the indigenous people were forced to work at the mines, where many perished...

Morro Velho, also called AngloGold Ashanti Brasil Mineração, after its current owner AngloGold Ashanti, is a complex of gold mines located near the city of Nova Lima in the Minas Gerais state of Brazil.

It is one of two mining operations of the company in Brazil, the other being the Serra Grande Gold Mine.

In 2008, the Brazilian operations contributed 8% to the company's overall production.

Copperfields Mine, originally known as Temagami Mine, is an abandoned copper and silver mine on Temagami Island in Lake Temagami, Ontario, Canada. The mine opened in 1955 and comprises both underground and surface workings within a sulfide ore body. Situated in Phyllis Township, the mine produced 34,000,000 dollars Canadian with 80 million pounds of copper, 230,028 ounces of silver and 13,271...

Barton Mine, also known as Net Lake Mine, is an abandoned surface and underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 0.50 km (0.31 mi) north of the Temagami Arena in Temagami North and just east of the Ontario Northland Railway in northwestern Strathy Township. Dating back to the early 1900s, it is one of the oldest mines in Temagami. Barton was the site of a fire in...

Beanland Mine, also known as Clenor Mine, is an abandoned surface and underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 1 km (0.62 mi) west of Arsenic Lake and 4 km (2.5 mi) northwest of the town of Temagami in central Strathy Township. It is named after Sydney Beanland, who first claimed the mine site in the 1920s and was a director for the mine from 1937 to...

Big Dan Mine is an abandoned underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 1 km (0.62 mi) southwest of Net Lake and just west of the Ontario Northland Railway in east-central Strathy Township. It is named after Dan O'Connor, who first claimed the site in the 1890s.

Mining operations began at the site in the early 1900s, making Big Dan one of the oldest mines in...

Blue Hawk Mine is located on the east slope of Blue Grouse Mountain, on the west side of Okanagan Lake. The mine is just a few kilometres from Downtown Kelowna in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

The mine consists of several adits operated for a single year, 1934, and has been virtually abandoned ever since. British Columbia's Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources refers...

Cobalt is a town in the district of Timiskaming, province of Ontario, Canada, with a population of 1,133 (as per the Canada 2011 Census.)

In 2001 Cobalt was named "Ontario's Most Historic Town" by a panel of judges on the TV Ontario program Studio 2, and in 2002 the "Cobalt Mining District" was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

W.E. Logan discovered cobalt in 1884 at the future...

The Danlou Occurrence, also known as the Danlou Gold Occurrence and the Mortimer Occurrence, is a mineralized zone in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. Gold is the occurrence's primary commodity while copper and silver are secondary commodities. It occurs in a quartz vein within a diabase-porphyry shear zone. Pyrite and chalcopyrite are present in small amounts.

The Occurrence is located 10 km...

Faro is a town in the central Yukon, Canada, formerly the home of the Faro Mine, the largest open pit lead–zinc mine in the world as well as a significant producer of silver and other natural resource ventures. The mine was built by the Ralph M. Parsons Construction Company of the USA with General Enterprises Ltd. of Whitehorse being the main subcontractor. As of 2011, the population is 344,...

Kaslo is a village in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada, located on the west shore of Kootenay Lake. Known for its natural environment, it is a member municipality of the Central Kootenay Regional District. As of 2011, it had a population of 1,026.[

Originally designated as a sawmill site in 1889, Kaslo grew on the silver boom of the 19th century, and retains much of the...

Keeley-Frontier Mine is a large abandoned mine in the ghost town of Silver Centre, Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It consists of two underground mines that were sunk 1,455 ft (443 m) below the surface. Keeley Mine was discovered in 1907, while Frontier Mine was constructed in 1921. The 8th level of the Keeley Mine connected with the 6th level of the Frontier Mine in 1962, creating the...

Barton Mine, also known as Net Lake Mine, is an abandoned surface and underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 0.50 km (0.31 mi) north of the Temagami Arena in Temagami North and just east of the Ontario Northland Railway in northwestern Strathy Township. Dating back to the early 1900s, it is one of the oldest mines in Temagami. Barton was the site of a fire in...

New Denver is a village in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, along the shore of Slocan Lake. New Denver was founded as a mining town in 1892, and briefly known as Eldorado City before being renamed after Denver, Colorado. It was incorporated as a village in 1929 and currently has approximately 504 residents.

During World War II, New Denver became a Japanese Canadian internment camp. Not...

The Nipissing Mine is an abandoned silver mine in Cobalt, Ontario, Canada, located on Nip Hill on the east side of Long Lake.

It was developed in the subsequent Cobalt silver rush of 1903. The original 843 acres of claims were purchased by Ellis P. Earle from the Ferland Syndicate. By 1907, it was the top producing mine in the area. The company completely surrounded Peterson and Carr lakes and...

Priest Mine is an abandoned surface and underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 19 km (12 mi) northwest of the hamlet of Marten River on an island in north-central Cross Lake. Dating back to the early 1900s, it is one of the oldest mines in the municipality of Temagami.

History

The mine was discovered in 1907 when attention was focused there by the discovery of...

Silver Centre is a ghost town in Timiskaming District, Northeastern Ontario, Canada, situated in South Lorrain Township. It is located approximately 35 km (22 mi) south of North Cobalt, and 3 km (1.9 mi) west of Highway 567. Silver Centre was a secondary camp to the great silver fields of Cobalt, discovered in 1903. There are no current residents in Silver Centre. It is still an active...

The Village of Slocan, historically also known as Slocan City, is a village in the Slocan Valley of the West Kootenay region of the southeastern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. It is located at the southern end of Slocan Lake, to the south of New Denver, which sits mid-way up the lake's eastern shore.

The townsite was staked at the lower end of Slocan Lake in 1892 following massive...

The Sullivan Mine is a now-closed conventional–mechanized underground mine located in Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada. The ore body is a complex, sediment-hosted, sedimentary exhalative deposit consisting primarily of zinc, lead, and iron sulphides. Lead, zinc, silver and tin were the economic metals produced. The deposit lies within the lower part of the Purcell Supergroup and...

The Temagami Occurrence is a geological occurrence in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located near the southern end of Kanichee Lake in west-central Strathy Township. It is named after Temagami, the municipality in which the occurrence is located in.

Gold and silver are the occurrence's primary commodities, while arsenic, zinc and copper are secondary commodities. Felsic metavolcanic rocks...

The Trethewey Mine is an abandoned silver mine in Cobalt, Ontario, Canada, located northwest of the Coniagas Mine near Sasaginaga Lake

The West Kootenay region of British Columbia, where the city of Nelson is situated, is part of the traditional territories of the Sinixt (or Lakes) and Ktunaxa (Kutenai) peoples.

Gold and silver were found in the area in 1867. Following the discovery of silver at nearby Toad Mountain in 1886, the town boomed quickly, leading to incorporation in 1897. Two railways were built to pass through...

Between 1830 and 1850 Chilean silver mining grew at an unprecedented pace which transformed mining into one of the country's principal sources of wealth. The rush caused rapid demographic, infrastructural, and economic expansion in the semi-arid Norte Chico mountains where the silver deposits lay. A number of Chileans made large fortunes in the rush and made investments in other areas of the...

First Berggeshrey

Berggeschrey or Berggeschrei ("mining clamour") was a German term for the rapid spread of news on the discovery of rich ore deposits that led to the rapid establishment of a mining region, as in the silver rush in the early days of silver ore mining in the Ore Mountains. It is similar in some respects to the gold rush in North America.

Even as the first settlements were...

The Glasebach Pit (German: Grube Glasebach) is a mining museum and former pit in the Harz fluorspar mining area near Straßberg in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is run by the East Harz Mining Society (Montanverein Ostharz e. V.). The pit was founded under the name of Vertrau auf Gott ("Trust in God").

The mining industry in the area around Straßberg goes back to the time around the...

Mining of copper, lead and silver in the area around Lautenthal started about 1225. In the middle of the 14th century, however, the Harz was depopulated because of plague and mining came to an end.

Mining in the Harz was started again in 1524. Lautenthal was founded in 1538 as a mining settlement on the river Laute, a small tributary of the Innerste, and had already been given the status of a...

The Rammelsberg is a mountain, 635 metres (2,083 ft) high, on the northern edge of the Harz range, south of the historic town of Goslar in the North German state of Lower Saxony. The mountain is the location of an important silver, copper, and lead mine, the only mine which had been working continuously for over 1,000 years when it finally closed in 1988. Since 1992, the visitor mine of...

The Samson Pit or Samson Mine (German: Grube Samson) is a historic silver mine in Sankt Andreasberg in the Upper Harz region of central Germany. The pit has one of the oldest man-made engines in the world, which is still working, and it can be seen in operation during guided tours. The man engine, installed in the Samson Pit in 1837, used to be driven by the water power of the Rehberg Ditch...

Laurium was famous in Classical antiquity for its silver mines, which was one of the chief sources of revenue of the Athenian state. The metallic silver was mainly used for coinage. The Archaeological Museum of Lavrion shows much of the story of these mines.Recent discoveries date the first mines to 3200BC

Systematic exploitation of mineral resources seem to have begun un the 6th century BC...

The Lavrion Mining District has been dated to the Early Bronze Age at about 3200-2800BC and is considered to be the earliest recorded site for the extraction of ore in Europe. From the recorded history of the mines (thanks to the Athenians) after a perceived lull there was an upsurge of mining activity in about 500BC.

At this time Silver output was so vast that the Athenians are thought to...

Mining in Greece is believed to have started in the third millennium BCE, and the earliest evidences of mining in Greece come from Thorikos.

At the foot of the Mycenaean Acropolis of Thorikos (Greece), a team of mining archaeologists, discovered, in 2016 an inextricable network of galleries, shafts and chambers. About 5 kilometers of subterranean conduits dug in the marble and the limeschists...

The Iwami Ginzan (石見銀山) was an underground silver mine in the city of Ōda, in Shimane Prefecture on the main island of Honshu, Japan. It was the largest silver mine in Japanese history. It was active for almost four hundred years, from its discovery in 1526 to its closing in 1923.

The mines, mining structures, and surrounding cultural landscape — listed as the "Iwami Ginzan Silver...

Keno City is a small community in Yukon, Canada at the end of the Silver Trail highway. Its population was 15 in 2006 (stats Canada census). Keno City was the site of a former silver-lead mining area proximal to Keno Hill. Keno City is 13 kilometres away from Elsa, Yukon, which is owned by Alexco Resource Corp who currently own and operate the various Ag-Pb-Zn deposits in the Keno Hill area....

Batopilas (Spanish: [batoˈpilas] ( listen)) is a small town, and seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, located along the Río Batopilas at the bottom of the Batopilas canyon, part of the Copper Canyon. As of 2010, the town of Batopilas had a population of 1,220. Its elevation above sea level is 578 metres (1,896 ft). The town is situated in...

Mina Proaño, an underground silver mine located in central Mexico, is one of the world's largest and most profitable silver mines. The mine is located just outside the city of Fresnillo, Zacatecas; and is also known as Mina Fresnillo and Fresnillo Silver Mine. The mining operation is run by Peñoles which, since 1967, has been controlled by Mexico City-based Grupo BAL. In 2004, Mina Proaño...

Planchas de Plata (Spanish for slabs of silver), sometimes called Bolas de Plata (balls of silver) is a historic silver-mining district near Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and a few miles south of the border with the US state of Arizona. Native silver was discovered here in 1736 by Antonio Siraumea, a Yaqui Indian, on the Rancho Arizona of Bernardo de Urrea. Historian Donald Garate believes Urrea's...

Tayopa is the name of a legendary lost silver mine in the Sierra Mountains of Mexico. Many stories, legends and myths surround it as well as articles and books describing the search for it. Folklorist J. Frank Dobie devoted part of his book "Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver" to the story of this legendary lost mine.

Zacatecas (Spanish pronunciation: [sakaˈtekas]) is a city and municipality in Mexico, and the capital and largest city of the state of Zacatecas. Located in north-central Mexico, the city had its start as a Spanish mining camp in the mid-16th century. Native Americans had already known about the area's rich deposits of silver and other minerals. Due to the wealth that the mines provided,...

Kongsberg Silver works ( Kongsberg Sølvverk) was a mining operation at Kongsberg in Viken county in Norway. The town of Kongsberg is the site of the Norwegian Mining Museum (Norsk Bergverksmuseum).

Operating from over 80 different sites, Kongsberg silver mines constituted the largest mining field in Norway. It was the largest pre-industrial working place in Norway, with over 4,000 workers at...

Sala Silver Mine (Swedish: Sala silvergruva) is a mine in Sala Municipality, in Västmanland County in Sweden. The mine was in continuous production from the 15th century until 1908. Additional mining occurred in 1950-1951 and also in 1945-1962 in the neighboring Bronäs Mine.

The Sala ore is mainly known for its high silver content though the ore also contained economic amounts of lead and...

The Santa Ana Silver Project is a proposed open pit silver mining project by the Bear Creek Mining Corporation for the Santa Ana silver deposit in Huacullani District, Chucuito Province, Puno Region in southern Peru. Bear Creek's concession to the mine was revoked in late June 2011.

Bear Creek states that 63.2 million ounces of silver (proven and probable mineral reserves) are at the site,...

The Nasa (Nasafjäll) silver mine (Swedish: Nasa silvergruva), located on Nasa Mountain on the border between Sweden and Norway, was used for mining silver, mainly from 1635 to 1659 and from 1770 to 1810. Smelting occurred during the first period (1635-1659) at Skellefteälven; during the second period (1770-1810) at Adolfström in Arjeplog .

It was an indigenous Sami man by the name of Peder...

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...

Pearce, Arizona, and Sunsites, Arizona, are adjacent unincorporated communities in the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, Arizona, United States. The two communities are often referred to as Pearce-Sunsites, Pearce/Sunsites, or Pearce Sunsites.

Pearce is located between the Cochise Stronghold, Chiricahua National Monument, and the winter Sandhill Crane refuge of Whitewater Draw making...

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.