The discovery of gold in California in 1848 did more than trigger the migration of tens of

thousands of people hoping to make their fortune in the mineral‐rich West. It created a
body of prospectors willing to go wherever a strike was made. When gold was found in
British Columbia in 1857, prospectors streamed north into Canada. In the following
year, the slogan was “Pikes Peak or Bust,” as news spread about gold in what is today
Colorado. The Comstock Lode, which produced over $300 million in gold and silver over
a twenty‐year period, was discovered in 1859 in western Nevada. Miners flocked to
Idaho and Montana in the 1860s and followed the lure of gold into the Black Hills in the
Dakota territory in 1875 (a violation of Sioux treaty rights that led to the Battle of the
Little Bighorn). The last gold rush of the century brought miners to the Klondike region
of Canada's Yukon Territory in 1897. The mining boom also brought government to the
Mountain West, first through vigilante committees that provided swift justice to those
who broke the law. Several areas became territories and states sooner than they would
have without the mining rush. Nevada, for instance, was admitted to the Union in 1864,
just five years after the discovery of the Comstock Lode.

Boom and bust on the mining frontier. The pattern was the same almost everywhere.
With the discovery of gold or silver, prospectors rushed into an area to stake their
claims, and small mining camps turned into boomtowns overnight, complete with dance
halls, saloons, prostitutes, and astronomical prices for food and equipment. Those who
really struck it rich were, more often than not, those who supplied the prospectors with
what they needed, and not the prospectors themselves. Most of the mines played out
quickly, and as people moved on to newer strikes, once bustling mining communities
turned into ghost towns. If the deposits were rich, the mines were soon taken over by
well‐financed corporate mining operations.

Surface deposits were quickly removed through placer mining in which a lone

prospector panned for gold by a stream or a small group of men used a sluice to wash
off larger amounts of dirt and sand. To get at the ore buried deep inside rock or veins of
quartz, shafts had to be dug and shored up with timber, pumps installed to keep the
tunnels dry, and mills set up to crush the rock and separate the precious metals. All this
required heavy machinery, capital, and technical expertise provided by investors and
large mining companies. Gold and silver were not the only sources of wealth on the
mining frontier. Lead, zinc, and particularly copper were important as well. The
Anaconda Mine in Montana, where copper ore was extracted, smelted, and refined,
helped make the United States the world's leading producer of copper in the 1880s.

Labor on the mining frontier. The shift from placer to hard‐rock mining meant that
independent prospectors became laborers, paid either by the day or the week. Work in
the mines was hard and dangerous, and the pay was usually low. Miners of the
Comstock Lode went on strike as early as 1864 for higher wages, shorter hours, and
better working conditions, and although unions such as the Miners Protective
Association had wide support throughout the mining frontier, opposition to them was
also strong. In 1892, state and federal troops were used to break up a strike in Coeur
d'Alene, Idaho, where the miners were seeking company recognition of their union. This
conflict led to the formation of the Western Federation of Miners under the leadership of
William “Big Bill” Haywood. A number of the WFM's 50,000 members also became an
important force in the even more militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or
“Wobblies”), founded by Haywood in 1905.

From the days of the California gold rush, mining attracted an ethnically diverse labor
force, including Chinese, Irish, Mexican, and new immigrants from southern and eastern
Europe. Racial discrimination among these groups was rife. More often than not, whites
actually worked the mines while Chinese or Mexicans served as muckers, who loaded
and dumped the ore cars, or as simple laborers taking away surface rubble. Such
unskilled jobs paid considerably less than the wages miners received. On those parts of
the mining frontier where Chinese and Mexican workers were not common, another
hierarchy of labor based on ethnicity emerged, with Americans and Irish working as the
miners while recent arrivals from Italy, Greece, or the Balkans took on the menial tasks.

Though various types of mines have existed across the nation, almost from the very
discovery of America, those in the American West are and were, the most plentiful, and
the history they’ve left in their wakes is of romance, fortunes made and lost, hardships,
greed, Indian Wars, and numerous crusty old ghost towns.
From the beginning, America presented an image of golden wealth, and that image has
never been lacking to the rest of the world. A key factor in shaping the national
character of this country, the discovery of gold and other precious metals in the
American West accelerated western expansion, beginning with the California Gold
Rush in 1848.

After the discovery go gold in California, which clearly showed how rich the strikes could
be, more prospectors by the thousands headed west to explore every promising region
in their search for wealth. To these many adventurers, no mountain was too high to
climb, no canyon too precarious to descend, and no river too difficult to cross. They
were a determined lot.

Though there was never another find that was as large as that of California, there were
numerous others that led prospectors by the thousands to the west, sure that they
would find their fortune. in 1859, gold was found near Denver, Colorado, and
the Comstock Lode was developed in Nevada. In the 1860s, precious minerals were
found in eastern Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. In the 1870s, more strikes were made in
the Black Hills of South Dakota and Tombstone, Arizona. Other finds led to boom
camps in the Coeur d’Alene region in Idaho in 1883 and the Klondike Gold Rush in
1898.

Many states in the American West were initially settled primarily by prospectors and
miners, including Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, South
Dakota, and Alaska. Though these states and others had been traveled by explorers,
trappers, and traders, there were far more miners than those other fearless pioneers.
These states’ histories are intimately tied to mining activities, and many became
territories and attained state status because of the mining activities.

The early attention paid to mining focused on gold and silver discoveries. However,
later, discoveries of industrial minerals like coal, copper, iron, oil, and gas stimulated
new and continued growth of settlements in the west.

Several men made their fortunes and gained fame for their mining activities, such
as George Hurst, who made his fortune in the Comstock Lode of Nevada, Horace
Tabor, who became the silver king of Colorado after grubstaking a miner in Leadville;
George W. MacKay, who also made his fortune in the Comstock Lode; and many
others.

However, the vast majority became laborers, working for poor wages in dangerous
environments and living in desolate communities. Their glamorous and romantic images
of mining were more often dashed as they performed back-breaking work and
experienced numerous mining accidents.

Of the many mining camps of the American West, some were stimulated by other types
of growth, and they continue to exist today — cities such as Butte, Montana; Silver
City, New Mexico; El Dorado, California; and many more.

But others faded into insignificance, leaving behind only shells of their former selves,
becoming ghost towns decades ago. Of yet more, there is no sign of their prosperous
times whatsoever, except for a debris-strewn and pockmarked landscape.

The mining industry of the American West not only created fortunes and disappointment
for the individual miners but also played an important part in American labor history,
mining technology, and the growth of geological knowledge. It was also responsible for
displacing thousands of Native Americans, leading to several Indian Wars and their
forcible removal to reservations. Another negative impact that these many mining
booms left behind was massive environmental scars, which are still being addressed
today.

Today, hundreds of ghost towns in the American West give tribute to their more
prosperous times. Some, like Bodie, California; Bannack, Montana; and Bayhorse,
Idaho, have been preserved as state parks. Others have become commercial tourist
destinations, such as Tombstone, Arizona; South Pass City, Wyoming; and Virginia
City, Nevada. However, there are many more that are slowly returning to the elements
as their crumbling structures deteriorate over time. A few of these include Comet,
Montana; Delamar, Nevada; Steins, New Mexico; Miners Delight, Wyoming, and dozens
of others.
References:

http://npshistory.com/publications/nhl/theme-studies/mining-frontier.pdf

https://www.jstor.org

https://www.legendsofamerica.com

https://www.cliffsnotes.com