Ghost towns & mining

50 Places

Bridgeport, California

Masonic

Bodie's 20th-century rival was a paragon of respectability and calm—but the mines eventually ran dry.

slgwv

Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum

Dedicated to the hard, high-quality coal that fueled Pennsylvania's industrial revolution.

slgwv

Cornwall Iron Furnace

A well-preserved mid-19th century ironmaking furnace, now a historical site.

slgwv

Denio Junction, Nevada

Homer Verne (Adams) Mine

An isolated early 20th-century gold mine in the remote Pine Forest Range contains much preserved equipment.

slgwv

Silver Reef

A mining camp built around an unexpected occurrence of silver.

slgwv

Palisade

Little is left of this formerly bustling railroad junction on the Transcontinental Railroad.

slgwv

Moapa Valley, Nevada

Buffington Pockets

The rocks exposed at Valley of Fire State Park also occur in a much less known but equally spectacular area a few miles to the southwest.

slgwv

Caliente, Nevada

Elgin Schoolhouse

This one-room school in the tiny railroad settlement of Elgin didn't close down until 1967

slgwv

Virginia & Truckee Railroad

Excursion trains are still run on a surviving section of the short line that connected Virginia City to the rest of the world.

slgwv

Park Canyon

A ghost town site dominated by the extraordinary ruins of a mill constructed from brick and stone.

slgwv

Gold Point

A not-quite-ghost town in western Nevada, off US-95.

slgwv

Goldfield, Nevada

Palmetto

Ruins of this late 19th-century mining camp are right on Nevada State Route 266

slgwv

Pigeon Spring

Ruins of a stamp mill are just off Nevada State Route 266.

slgwv

Greenwood Furnace State Park

Preserved ruins of a late 19th-early 20th century proto-industrial complex.

slgwv

Bridgeport, California

Chemung Mine

An abandoned early 20th-century gold mine in a spectacular setting overlooking Bridgeport Valley and the Sierra Nevada.

slgwv

Keck Museum

The original building of a mining school endowed by one of the barons of the Comstock Lode now houses a museum of earth science and mining history.

slgwv

Yerington, Nevada

Pine Grove and Rockland

Well-preserved ruins in the Pine Grove Hills of western Nevada.

slgwv

Tunnel Camp and the Seven Troughs District

A well-preserved set of ruins not far from Lovelock.

slgwv

Verdi, California

Crystal Mine

A mine in the Sierra Nevada that produced nothing but barren quartz.

slgwv

Fairplay, Colorado

South Park City

This open-air reconstruction of an Old West town, a cross between a theme park and a museum, provides an immersive historical experience.

slgwv

Bristol Well

Beehive charcoal kilns and slag deposits mark this late 19th century camp centered on a smelter.

slgwv

Water Gap

The site of an improbable and ill-fated attempt to use dammed floodwaters for irrigation.

slgwv

Crescent Mill

A remarkably well-preserved brick chimney from a smelter dating to the 1860s is all that remains of this former mill.

slgwv

Gabbs Mine

The only United States mine for magnesium carbonate has been operating continuously since the 1930s.

slgwv

Carbondale, Colorado

Redstone Coke Ovens

Once owned by the largest employer in Colorado, these ovens have been abandoned for over a century.

slgwv

Truckee, California

Boca

This settlement on the original Transcontinental Railroad began by harvesting timber, but transitioned to a forgotten 19th-century industry: harvesting ice.

slgwv

Lundy, California

May Lundy Mine

A scenic hike in the High Sierra that ends at an old gold mine.

slgwv

Millett, Nevada

Ophir

A difficult trail leads to interesting ruins in a remote canyon in the Toiyabe Range.

slgwv

Carrara

This small town was built around a marble quarry and named after one of the most famous sources of marble in the world.

slgwv

Metropolis Ghost Town

An ill-fated attempt to grow wheat in the sagebrush steppe of northeastern Nevada.

slgwv

Scheelite, California

Pine Creek Tungsten Mine

For decades, the largest tungsten producer in the U.S. was located in a spectacular setting in the high Sierra Nevada, with some of the workings over 11,000 feet.

slgwv

Hawthorne, Nevada

Aurora

This Gold Rush ghost town was once the subject of a territorial dispute between California and Nevada.

slgwv

Yerington, Nevada

Yerington Pit (Anaconda Copper Mine)

A deep toxic lake fills this abandoned open-pit copper mine, now a Superfund site.

slgwv

Panaca Summit Kilns

Two well-preserved charcoal kilns survive in a remote part of eastern Nevada.

slgwv

Pine Swamp, Pennsylvania

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

A well-preserved example of an early industrial operation in the northeastern United States.

slgwv

Hamilton, Nevada

Belmont Mill

One of the best-preserved early 20th-century ore-processing mills in Nevada is maintained in a state of arrested decay.

slgwv

Columbus, Nevada

Candelaria

This silver-mining camp has been active intermittently from the 1860s to the present.

slgwv

Manhattan, Nevada

Belmont

The second seat of Nye County, still mostly a ghost town, has become a magnet for those looking to live "away from it all."

slgwv

Mono Mills, California

Mono Mills

A relic of the region's once booming timber industry.

slgwv

Virginia City, Nevada

Gold Hill Hotel

The oldest hotel in Nevada.

slgwv

Bridgeport, California

Sinnamon Cut

This trench, some 2,300 feet long, is only the most prominent relic of a largely forgotten episode of placer mining on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada.

slgwv

Nye County, Nevada

Tybo

Equipment used to mine silver and lead has been preserved in this almost-ghost town in northern Nye County.

slgwv

Carson City, Nevada

Virginia City Flume

Ruins of the original wooden flume that carried water to Virginia City are still visible high on the Virginia Range.

slgwv

Silver Peak, Nevada

Silver Peak

The precious-metals strikes dating back to the 1860s are now mostly inactive, but this area has become the United States' only domestic source of lithium.

slgwv

Mountain Pass, California

Mountain Pass Mine

The only mine for rare earth elements in the United States has been intermittently active since the 1950s.

slgwv

Salt Creek and the Salt Creek Hills

An improbable creek near Death Valley, not far from the oldest surviving Euro-American structure in the Mojave Desert.

slgwv

Taylorsville, California

Walker Mine

An old copper mine in Plumas National Forest, formerly served by a tramway, seems to have been successfully remediated after years of acrimony and effort

slgwv

Pahrump, Nevada

Wheeler Kilns

Collapsed charcoal kilns in the Spring Mountains of southern Nevada.

slgwv

Map