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Photograph taken April 22, 2008.
| Silver Bell Mine |
| On the slopes to the south you can see the remains of the Silver Bell Mine, with its tipples still standing. These ore bins held and fed rock to a stamp battery that crushed the ore into a sandy-watery pulp and pushed it onto an amalgamation table where the precious metals were extracted. Though the mines operated some 40 years, ownership and details about the mine's riches are sketchy. Nevertheless, it was a versatile mine: gold in the 1930s, lead in the 1940s, and copper in the 1950s. |
| Prospectors began staking claims in this desert region around 1865. Gold fever gave rise to mine names like Fore Aces, Big Bozo Claim, Lucky Turkey #2, and Hard Digging. Mining reached its peak here by 1917 and tapered off by the 1960s. |
| Ore was hoisted from the Silver Bell Mine by the skip and dumped onto the grizzly, which sorted ore into the tipple. A 1958 assay report showed the Silver Bell Mine as having low gold and silver values, but high copper values -- worth about $90 a ton. | |
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Other photos about Geography - California's Colorado Desert or Joshua Tree National Park.
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Date and time this page was prepared:
9/22/2024 4:50:53 PM
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Eastern Mojave Vegetation