Mining

Belmont Mining District

Directions: 45 miles northeast of Tonopah on the east side of the Toquima Range.

Description: From 1865 to 1890, the Belmont area produced about $15 million in gold and silver. For a time, Belmont, located about 45 miles north of Tonopah, was the Nye County seat. It seemed well on its way to permanence. However, once the ore dried up, the town began to fall into the familiar pattern of decay and neglect.

A visit to Belmont is a chance to commune with the spirits. Just outside the main part of the town are ruins of an abandoned mill site. Red brick walls and the remains of large smokestacks are all that is left of the Monitor Mill. Newer houses have been constructed around the older structures, including one home with a satellite dish. It appears that Belmont has been at least partially reclaimed from the ghosts. Despite the new construction, there is still plenty of old Belmont to see. The main street, now paved, is lined with aging storefronts and remains of what was once the town’s central business district. On one side, one can find the arched brick facade that probably was the town bank. Across the way are tumbledown pieces of the former Cosmopolitan Saloon.

North of the town’s center is the Belmont Courthouse. The picturesque two-story brick structure has been partially restored by the Nevada Division of State Parks, which no doubt saved it. A historic marker notes that the courthouse was built in 1876, about 11 years after the town was founded. For nearly 30 years, the building served as the seat of Nye County. However, in 1905, upstart Tonopah eclipsed the fading Belmont and claimed the county seat for itself, which guaranteed the demise of the community.

The surrounding hillsides tell additional stories about Belmont. To the southeast are brickworks, notable for a massive brick smokestack of about 30 feet. To the south are the impressive walls of a large mill and in between sits the foundations, walls, and ruins of brick and wooden homes as well as other buildings.

Iron Bog

Directions: Drive up American Fork Canyon as far as you can towards Mineral Basin. When the road gets too rough for your vehicle, get out and start walking. After about 1.25 miles, a sign indicates the location of the erstwhile fen. Several hundred yards down the road the Bog Mine discharges red, iron-rich, acidic water into the creek. The Iron Bog and Bog Mine are located below Pittsburg Lake.

Description: The "Iron Bog" as it is called, is not a bog at all, it is a peat deposit formed in a fen that was destroyed when the Bog Mine intercepted groundwater and dewatered the fen.  Now the dry peat routinely catches of fire. This fen and its peat deposit formed over thousands of years since the end of the last ice age. Fens are wetlands that develop where a relatively constant supply of ground water to the plant rooting zone maintains saturated conditions most of the time and the water chemistry reflects the mineralogy of the surrounding and underlying soils and geological materials. The water that discharges from the Bog Mine portal is acidic and contributes metals to the creek. This is a prime example of the kind of damage to wetlands, streams, and aquatic ecosystems caused by historic mining in the west.