Humboldt County
Golconda Post Office
Dec. 23, 1869 to Present
In 1897, the Glagow & Western Exploration Company began ambitious new development at Adelaide, connected to Golconda by the new narrow gauge Golconda & Adelaide Railroad. The Company also laid out a new Golconda townsite and built a ninety-ton concentrating plant and smelter. The town's population grew to 500, with six hotels and a newspaper. Unfortunately, by June 1900, it was determined that the smelter wasn't properly suited for the ore from Adelaide, and it only operated intermittently before closing in 1905, causing the town to decline. Two years later, the smelter was overhauled, but again proved to be problematic and operations were suspended after a year and a half. In 1911, the smelter was dismantled, followed by the G&A Railroad in 1914.
The last major activity to occur in Golconda began in 1939, when the Nevada Massachusetts Company erected a 100-ton chemical plant. Due to losses during World War II, however, it too was closed and dismantled in 1952. Today Golconda is a sleepy little hamlet of around 75. It has served as a stop along the Victory Highway and continues to do so along Interstate 80, although many of the original buildings are no longer around. The Hot Springs Hotel burned in 1961. Glasgow & Western Exploration Co. concentrating plant and smelter, built 1897 to treat ore from Adelaide. It ceased operation in 1905 and was scrapped in 1911.
The tungsten deposits in the Excelsior Mountains were discovered in 1916 by Charles W. Noble on claims he originally located for silver. Shortly after the discovery of tungsten the Noble property was sold to Atkins-Kroll Co., who operated it until the mine was sold to Noonan, Bean, and Beck of Sodaville in December of 1917. A mill and power line was constructed in the early 1930's. Water was piped in from a well below the mill and, later, from across the valley in 1935. The Depression lessened the need for tungsten but World War Two brought the industry out of the slump.
You know they're serious when they start buying towns.
Atkins, Kroll and Company, the San Francisco tungsten producers, have bought the entire town of Sodaville from "Bob" Stewart and have a force of 100 men employed in the preparations for the construction of a concentrating plant for the treatment of tungsten ores from the Noble mine, 11 miles from town. 1916 May 23, Reno Evening Gazette
The mill has been started on the Wagner and Silver Dyke Tungsten properties, near Sodaville and nine miles south of Mina. Those properties are under lease to C.W. Poole, well known tungsten operator of Lovelock. Alex Ranson is in charge of operations as superintendent. A big body of uniformly high grade scheelite ore was recently opened in the Silver Dyke, which is being worked through a drift run from the Wagner shaft. The Silver Dyke was operated up to the entrance of the United States into the world war, by the Atkina-Kroll company, which made record production of over one million dollars in twelve months. 1925 August 1, Reno Evening Gazette
They're starting to get serious now..
When you operate in a steep canyon in Nevada, you're going to have problem with roads
And again....
Didn't stop them from digging though...
The Nevada Massachusetts company, which is operating the Silver Dyke tungsten mine near Sodaville is in 786 feet from the portal into the vein that was the objective of the present work. A seventy-five ton mill being erected on this ground is about completed and excavations are being made for the installation of an aerial tramway from the tunnel to the mill. L.B. Spences is now engaged in surveying a route for the power line from Mina to tap the Mineral county power system and work on construction of the line will start as soon as material is received. 1929 November 5, Reno Evening Gazette
You gotta do something with all that ore- let's mill it! That way you don't have so much to haul down that nasty road.
Another storm...
The Silver Dyke has temporary repairs made on its road to the mine and cars and trucks are now able to get through to the mine for the first time since the storm set in. 1930 May 16, Reno Evening gazette
The Silver Dyke is cooking now. All that construction and milling is really paying off! Life is good!
Wait, what?
The temporary closing of the Silver Dyke mill has been offset by the reopening of the Lucky Boy mine at Hawthorne, the News of Hawthorne says. It is to be admitted that the tungsten market at present is in bad shape while silver and lead prices have tumbled to the bottom. In spite of this the Silver Dyke mine a tungsten producer is being developed and the mill can be opened on short notice. 1930 July 15
On account of the lack of demand for tungsten at this time, because of the fact that steel manufacturers cannot sell their output, the new mill on the property is not in operation at present. 1930 September 16, Reno Evening Gazette
More road issues, and let's throw in some earthquake issues for good measure! The good news is the economy is picking up.
Sure wish we had some more water to run the mill though.
Hey, there's some water on that hill yonder! Let's get it!
Ahh, that's better! Let's crank up that mill again!
Awww, gimme a break, willya?
OK, the mill's thawed and... wait... what?
The Nevada Massachusetts Company has discontinued operations at the Silver Dyke tungsten mine near here for an indefinite period, it is reported. 1938 April 27, Reno Evening Gazette
You know things are bad when the digging stops and strangers are looking through your tailings.
Bad time to sell, Mrs. Bean! Don't you know what's coming?
The Silver Dyke tungsten mine, formerly operated by the Nevada Massachusetts company, has been sold by Mrs. Bean of Los Angeles interests who plan to operate the property. 1941 July 15, Reno Evening Gazette
WAR! What is it good for? Apparently tungsten mines!
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NEWSPAPER None
The road to this site starts off good but gets rockier the closer you get. You can really see the effects of landslides and rock falls as you are constantly dodging rocks on the road. The road is nearly impassable as you get close to the mine. Several buildings still stand here, and the ruins- clinging to the sides of the canyon-- are worth carefully exploring. We did find this link to a movie of a guy exploring inside the mine. Would not recommend going into old mines, and certainly wouldn't recommend going into one alone, but he did, and here is his movie. By the way, he talks about the mining of tungsten and then says they found scheelite and started mining that. Scheelite is a tungsten ore.
PRODUCTION FROM 1925-1944 TOTALLED 1,049,714 TONS OF ORE WITH AN AVERAGE GRADE OF 1.17% WO3, YIELDING 1, 100, 773 UNITS WO3. FROM 1944 TO 1958, PRODUCTION TOTALLED 2,073,565 TONS OF ORE GRADING 042% WO3, FOR A TOTAL YIELD OF 685,365 UNITS WO3. THE SHARP DROP IN ORE GRADE WAS DUE TO A CHANGE FROM MINING THE RICHER ORE OF THE STANK AND HUMBOLDT OREBODIES TO THE LOWER GRADE SUTTON OREBODIES IN 1944 AND THE ADDITION OF LARGE LOW-GRADE TONNAGES FROM OPEN PITS IN THE 1950'S WHICH AVERAGED 0.22-0. 25% WO3. THE TOTAL RECORDED PRODUCTION FROM THE MILL CITY DISTRICT MINES FOR THE PRODUCTIVE YEAR BETWEEN 1917 AND 1958 WAS 3,258,135 TONS OF ORE YIELDING ABOUT 2.2 MILLION UNITS OF WO3. IN 1982, GENERAL ELECTRIC ANNOUNCED 13-15 YEARS WORTH OF ORE RESERVES AT THE MILL CITY MINES, WHICH WERE NOT DEPLETED BEFORE THEY CLOSED OPERATIONS IN OCTOBER OF THAT YEAR.
Other USGS Reports for mines in the Tungsten area include: Baker Workings; Florence Group; Humboldt-Springer; Mill City Tungsten; Orphan Workings; Sutton; Tom Cat; Uncle Sam. According to excerpts from these USGS Reports, many of these mines were interconnected. For example, the Baker Working was connected to the Sutton Mine. An excerpt from the Humboldt-Springer Mine Report reads "The Humboldt mine is part of the Nevada-Massachusetts Co. workings. This mine is connected to the Springer at the 300-ft level." Etc.
Geologists have known that tungsten is present in the Nevada since the mid-1860's. Found in scheelite or huebnerite veins, the mineral was not sought by prospectors during the 19th century. Its use was limited; as a result, the ore was essentially worthless. The development of steel alloys and the proliferation of their use made tungsten more valuable as Nevada went into the turn of the 20th century. The first recorded production came from the lively Tungsten Mining District in White Pine County as vividly described by The White Pine News on January 11, 1900. Huebnerite was discovered at the base of Wheeler's Peak in January 1899 by Charles W. Gaby, and the Tungsten Mining District of ten square miles was established. A fledgling town popped up about 12 miles south of Osceola and was named Tungsten. This new production caught the attention of miners across the country, and in July 1901, the district was featured in New York Engineering and Mining. That same year, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) published its first bulletin on tungsten production in Nevada and focused on the White Pine deposits. As the price fluctuated and other deposits were located, Tungsten boomed and busted through the early years of the 20th century. In 1910, it was still large enough to stand as an election precinct in White Pine County with 24 voters, and a 50-ton concentrating mill was constructed. But this first town of Tungsten was soon eclipsed by Tungstonia also in White Pine County and a later Tungsten in Pershing County. Tungstonia was located in White Pine's Eagle Mining District, which dates back to 1859. Tungston was discovered in that district in 1910, and mills produced concentrates until at least 1916. Newspaper articles indicate that people were still living in Tungstonia in the 1940's, and production picked up on occasion during the 1950's and the 1960's.
In Pershing County, the town of Tungsten anchored the mining district in which the Nevada-Massachusetts Company was the largest corporate owner of tungsten mines and mills. By 1927, the company was the principal producer of tungsten in the country and would hold this position well into the 1950's. The accompanying town of Tungsten was the second largest community in Pershing County. According to a brief history penned by Donald Segerstrom whose family ran the company, Tungsten consisted of "a post office, general store, large single-men’s boarding house, elementary school, community hall, library, service station and more than 110 one-family dwellings." The White Pine towns of Tungsten and Tungstonia were never as large as Pershing's Tungsten. After the nearby mines and mills were closed in the late 1950's, Tungsten became "the youngest ghost town in Nevada," according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. When the area was revived in 1981, according to the Reno newspaper, the town did not reappear. Instead, miners and their families lived in nearby Imlay or commuted from Winnemucca.
In the 20th century, the demand for tungsten was driven mostly by the country's military activities during the two world wars and in eastern Asia. The primary domestic use was in incandescent lighting; tungsten is still found in light bulbs, although it is being rapidly replaced by LED. Advertisements for tungsten lights were common in Ely and Tonopah newspapers throughout the 1910s and could be found in the Reno Evening Gazette as late as May 1992. By the turn into the 21st century, Nevada newspapers carried ads for golf clubs strengthened with tungsten.
When demand was high, prices would rise and so would the number of tungsten discoveries. Nevada newspapers reported major discoveries near Goldfield in 1905, Round Mountain in 1907 and heralded it as the next big thing for Tonopah in 1907. Discoveries continued across the state. By 1988, the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology published a bulletin about the 375 deposits known to be in this state. According to Frances Church Lincoln, Nevada's primary mineral contributions during World War I were tungsten, antimony, manganese. During that time, Nevada produced 1,785 tons of tungsten from operations in Churchill, Mineral, Humboldt (Pershing), Nye, and White Pine Counties. Tungsten concentrates were valued at $3,650,485, roughly $88 million today. According to annual production statistics compiled by USGS, Nevada produced about one-fourth of the country's total. Most was used domestically and supplemented by international imports. According to USGS statistics, international production already far exceeded U.S. production by 1905, and since then, the U.S. contribution to world production has remained relatively minimal. Small though it may be by international comparison, the U.S. production of tungsten has depended heavily on Nevada. By 1918, Nevada produced one-third of the country's tungsten and was the second largest producer behind Colorado. At that point, most of Nevada’s ore came from the Eugene Mountains in what is now called Pershing County. (Pershing was the last county created by the Nevada Legislature. It was carved from Humboldt County in 1919.) Prices crashed after 1918 but efforts to revitalize began in 1924 in Pershing, Lincoln, and Mineral Counties. By the 1930's, war in Europe was driving a demand that continued to grow through the World War II period and into the Korean War era. Nevada was the country's major producer of tungsten. In particular, the Nevada-Massachusetts Company at Tungsten in Pershing County was the largest individual source of tungsten in the U.S. for many years. Nevada did not produce much gold or silver during World War II. In 1942, the Federal Government demanded that precious metal mines be closed across the country in an attempt to push mining efforts toward industrial minerals. In Humboldt County, the Getchell Mine near Golconda fortunately discovered a tungsten ore body next to its gold ore body; as a result, Getchell was the only Nevada mine that could commercially produce gold during World War II. Nevada was the leading tungsten-producing state in the nation during the 1940s and again in the 1950s. In 1951, production increased 90 percent over the previous year mostly due to the adaptation of open-pit mining methods. Previously, scheelite and huebnerite veins were mined through underground tunnels and shafts. Government purchases also stimulated the demand for tungsten, and Nevada was the largest tungsten-producing state in the country from 1953 through 1955 with more than 30 operations. In 1954, Nevada's mineral wealth came primarily from copper and tungsten production. Tungsten was just over $20 million, which is roughly $240 million today.
The last major tungsten mine was shut down in 1958, according to a 1964 publication. But never say "never again" in Nevada mining. Newspaper searches found numerous references to related mining activity after 1964. At the end of 1979, as Nevada entered a new decade, the President of the Nevada Mining Association, Robert Warren, announced Nevada's latest "mining renaissance" with the expected opening of 15 new operations producing "tungsten, molybdenum, silver, gold, and uranium."