Ghost town tuesday! Ophir's Revenge!

Well, it’s Tuesday again, so let’s visit another crazy ghost town. You know, it seems like pretty much every ghost town worth visiting has its roots in the mining industry. All I can figure is that mining was way more popular 130 years ago than it is now. I’m betting that if you read the journal of an average Utah citizen who lived 130 years ago it would say stuff like “buy more powder for blowing up rocks and stuff”, and “take pick-axe to pick-axe repairman” or “challenge claimjumper to duel. If win, buy beans for dinner.” Ha! Just kidding. Most old time miners were illiterate, and couldn’t have written in a journal if they had wanted to. But if they had, it would probably be filled with nonsensical statements like “brotzic graaaffpf trzzittit” and crude drawings of prostitutes.

Anyway, like I said, the towns I have covered so far all have been mining towns that sprung up, made a bunch of noise, chopped down all the trees, and disappeared. One day I would like to cover a ghost town that doesn’t follow the mine-mine-mine-gone model, but today is not that day. So, here we are, entering the mining town of Ophir.

The story behind this town is basically the same as every other town that we’ve covered. So if you loved those, then get prepared to do it all again. If not, then get prepared to do it all again anyway.

The story of Ophir starts with the army and the mormons. Back in the day, people didn’t trust mormons. Well, the mormons trusted mormons, but nobody else did. And the US Government was no exception. Ever since the pioneers bailed on the civilized parts of the US, rumors had abounded that the mormons were up to no good in their new deserty hideout, and planned to do all sorts of sinister things. I suspect that these rumors are still circulating in several parts of the US, but this post isn’t about that. If history has taught us anything, it’s that sending in the army is a good way to scare the locals and make sure they are saying their Pledges of Allegiance. And so, in the early 1860’s, the US did that very thing. And to make sure they had a REALLY close eye on those tricky Utahns, they set up shop at Fort Douglas, right next to Salt Lake City.

I imagine that the two parties didn’t really get along, but I wasn’t there so what do I know. I do know that nowadays Fort Douglas houses several excellent parking lots for University of Utah students. But sometimes they will give you a $20 ticket if you park in the wrong place. And they totally suck about it and won’t let you graduate if you owe them. Because they suck.

Well, after a while the army folks got bored. It seems that there weren’t enough troublemakers running around Utah to keep the solders busy, and you can only shoot the cannons at the nearby hills so many times before you’ve simply shot them enough. So the army turned to poking around the hills for minerals. Brigham Young had told his followers to forget about mining (see Silver Reef post! It’s called continuity folks!) so no one had really investigated the valley for neat and profitable minerals. One day the solders came across a group of Indians who had handfuls and handfuls of homemade lead and silver bullets. I guess werewolves were a big problem in Early Utah.

Mr. Forester looks like he probably had at least 30% wolf in him. The solders investigated the homemade bullets and soon found a series of Indian mines in the western slopes of the Oquirrh Mountains.

I don’t know who came up with the name “Oquirrh”. Once it was on a spelling test I took in third grade. Only one girl got it right and we all accused her of cheating. It turns out the 30 year old me still stands by that accusation (You’ll get yours Megan!)

My best attempt at Oquirrh was # 3. Aucker. That was the best I could come up with. Apparently I would just stick a question mark after any answer I wasn't sure about. I still got marked off though. Don't I get points for admitting I have no idea what is going on?? No, no I don't.

So in 1870, several mines were set up, and sure enough, along came the town of Ophir.
Here’s a fun bible fact! The town name came from some prospector who was a-reading his bible and thought that the canyon looked a little like King Soloman’s Mines in the land of Ophir. I have never read this particular part of the bible so I can’t agree or disagree with his assessment. Ahhh, what a fun fact this was.

The mines really took off. People were pulling up all sorts of valuable stuff. Gold, Silver, Lead, Copper (I don’t know why I’m capitalizing these) all showed up to the party. You may recall our good friend W.T. Barbee as the man who got shafted (I’m aware of this pun) in the Silver Reef post. Well, in case you felt bad for him, here’s some good news for all those Barbee fans out there. He discovered an ore body here at Ophir that was so rich in silver, they named the hill Silveropolis. This hill, in fact….

If you visit Silveropolis, prepare to be disappointed. From the outside it just looks like another stupid non-silvery hill. Things were so good for the miners that all sorts of stupid mine names popped up. The Miner’s delight mine, the Velocipede mine (awesome), Wild Delirium, and, of course, the Ophir mine.

The Ophir mine is still in pretty good shape. It’s still got an ore chute and everything. Plus there are still mine cars on the tracks!

Also it has a huge pile of rocks near it! Rocks that are filled with toxic heavy metals! Toxic metals that will make it so your kids will have flipper arms. Neat!

The mine is on private property, so I didn’t dare go up there. People get really shooty in Western Utah. And who can blame them? I would get defensive too if I had a sideways cabin in my front yard.

Some people have chosen a different route, and right in downtown Ophir there is a mine that I think has been occupied by permanent human residents. Permanent human residents who love to decorate with skulls

I bet the people who live here can dominate a party like nobody’s business. You may recognize that mine from the santa post I made last December. It’s the same one! I guess the people there like to decorate the mine during winter a little. Ophir is a weird place.

Well, back to history. During the 1870’s more and more concrete and stone buildings were constructed on the canyon floor while the mines continued to belch out all sorts of shiny rocks. A town hall with a fire station upgrade was built…

(Town hall is the building on the right. The other building is a unusually nice house)

As were several pretty swanky log cabins.


And more importantly, a quiet time was established.

Actually, I suspect that the quiet time rule came into effect long after the main mining boom. Apparently the town of Ophir has a problem with old men not getting enough sleep. Plus they say that you can only go 10 miles per hour on your ATV, but I bet there are exceptions.
I don’t know what that rusted metal thing is in the background. Let’s just call it a mining tube and be done with it.

As usual, things were good for only a few precious years. By 1880, the great ophir dream was over and most of its 6,000 residents moved onto other towns with equally ridiculously named hills. The ore was still there, but it was pretty deep now and hard to recover because, well, it was really down there. Shafts up to 1,000 feet deep were dug but no one really wants to go that far into the earth. It gets stinky and warm, and sometimes the mines fall in. The good news is that there wasn’t any groundwater in the area, so the mines didn’t flood. I’m no miner, but that seems like good news to me.

So the town sat, and through the years the population has dwindled down to 40 or 50 quiet loving citizens. What they do there I can’t really say. The Ophir Hill Consolidated mine, the Hidden Treasure mine and the Cliff mines all produced ore up until the 1970’s, so maybe they all worked there. Or maybe they are there because someone built this totally sweet hot tub.

And maybe make a few prank calls on the last phone booth in Utah.

During my visit, I took a wander up to an offshute of the Ophir Hill Consolidated Mine. It had collapsed over the years, revealing several veins of this….

Green rocks??? What madness is this?? That’s Malachite baby, and it’s copper-rich! That was kinda cool. The snow was really deep in the area, but you could see several large piles of snowy lumber, as well as more mining tubes. The most interesting thing to see up that way are the wooden towers that used to serve as a tram that lead up to the Cliff Mines high above town. I don’t have any pictures of those. Probably should have taken some. Ah well.

And that's the end of Ophir.

It's not the most exciting place you will ever go (if you ever go there) but it sure is quiet from 10 to 7.

Working on Saturday

If I have to work, you have to endure my crappy blog posts.




Also, someone keeps googling "busty mermaids" to find this blog. I hope whoever this person is that they find what they are looking for.

Ants in the keyboard

Several people are finding this blog by googling "Ants in keyboard". Sadly, my original post concerning this issue was largely posted by mistake, and didn't really offer any hints or tips on how to solve the problem of having ants in your keyboard. I feel guilty for leading people to believe that this blog will in some way offer a solution. So, here's a home-grown fix for those wierdos who have ants in their keyboards.

FIRST -

It's important to figure out why there are ants in your keyboard in the first place. I find that there are two likely causes.

CAUSE #1) Your computer/work area is located close to an anthill. Take a look around. Do you see a conical pile of sand surrounded by an area of cleared vegitation? If yes, then chances are that you are a victim of circumstance, and your keyboard is merely the fastest route for the ants to get to where they are going.

CAUSE #2) You are a slob, and have somehow managed to get food in your keyboard.

Figure out which of these two catagories best fit your particular situation.

SECOND

If you determined that you fit into Cause #1, the best route would be to move your keyboard to a location that would be less convenient to the ants. Try moving your computer indoors, or barring that, on top of a sandstone ledge or some other high point. Whatever you do, it is important that you clear the area of dead animals. Corpses will only serve as an attraction to the ants, resulting in possible re-infestation.

If you determined that you fit into Cause #2, I would recommend that you find a more suitable place to eat. Or, if that isn't an option, take a handfull of Crispix and crush them into a coworker's keyboard. This won't necessarily solve YOUR infestation, but it will cause additional infestations, and misery loves company.

LASTLY

Whatever the reason for your particular infestation, there probably is a point where it would be worth the cost to abandon the keyboard to the ants and let nature take its course. Be aware of this if repeated attempts to rid yourself of the ants have failed. When purchasing a new keyboard, make sure to pick one that comes in the shape of something non ant-friendly. Like a can of Raid, or perhaps any number of onimvores. Also, most importantly, don't eat near your keyboard.

Hope this helps.

Bats

Abandoned Mines

Ghost Town Tuesday - Gold Hill, Utah

People love gold. For as long as humans have had the capacity to care about things, gold has been pretty high on the list of things we have cared about. Frequently beating out other basics like food, water, and not being trapped in a dangerously unstable, poisonous gas-filled tunnels deep within the bowels of the earth. And true to our nature, once we have set our minds to something we will do pretty much anything to see our obsession fulfilled. Nothing is out of bounds when it comes to gold. There’s gold under the orphanage for sad kittens? Tear it down. That old guy over there has gold? Stab him in the neck and take it. There’s gold 1000 feet down under our feet? Let’s build a crude tunnel down to it. What if the tunnel starts to cave in? Aw, just shove a couple of two-by-fours down there and you’ll be fine. What’s great is that people back in the olden days didn’t care about all the fancy, modern uses of gold, like printer cables and gaudy opera houses. No, they needed gold to live. And by live I mean for prostitutes.

Why are we talking about gold? Well, we’ve already covered silver in the “Silver Reef” post, but by doing so it seems like we’ve been ignoring the real star of the subsurface world. And make no mistake, Utah has been in the middle of a long, steamy, often rocky relationship with gold. While it is in no way the leading producer of gold, Utah can trace much of its history back to this shiny yellow rock. I would post a picture of gold, but frankly I can’t afford any of the stuff to take a picture of. All I have is one of those gold-colored tinfoil coins with chocolate in the middle and soon I won’t have that anymore. Anyway, if you haven’t ever seen gold then perhaps this blog is too advanced for you, but just for the sake of moving on with the story, it’s yellow and amazingly valuable. I hate reading the newspaper because there’s the chance that I might accidently read a story that will make me think about stuff, and I am too lazy to do searches on the internet so I can’t tell you an exact price, but I think gold is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,100 an ounce, which is hefty amount of moneys for such a little amount of something.

Anyway, enough about gold. Let’s take a look at one particular blob of history that can be found waaaaayyyy over by the Nevada, about 130 miles due west of Salt Lake City in a ghost town named Gold Hill.

Here’s a map I have drawn on a napkin. You don’t pay me for professionalism. You don’t pay me at all.

I imagine that the town got the name “Gold Hill” because there was a hill there, and gold was found in it. In an equally creative display, the main mine in the area was named “Gold Hill Mine”. Apparently the one thing that gold doesn’t inspire in humans is the ability to come up with imaginative names for the places where it can be found.

Well, there’s no point avoiding it. We are going to have to look into the history of Gold Hill at some point, so let’s get to it. Gold and other intresting rock things was first discovered in the area by various folks headed to California around 1857. People tinkered around in the area and created a number of smallish mines and such, but nothing really took off. Then, for no apparent reason, people started to get really interested in the area. The town of Gold Hill was formally set up back in the good old year of 1892, and indeed, was so named for the gold-bearing hill located to the east of the town. A fella by the name of James P. Woodman set up a mill in the middle of town to process ore from a number of different mines he had in the area. Mr. Woodman had made a bucket of money with his discovery of the Emma Mine near Salt Lake. Here's a picture of Mr. Woodmaan

As an interesting side note, the Emma Mine has a bit of a sorted history that is worth mentioning here (cus who’s gonna stop me?). Folks had high hopes for the Emma Mine. Assayed samples showed that anyone could close their eyes and swing a pick in any direction and make a fortune. Obviously that’s not exactly what the assayer said, otherwise you would probably have mine filled with people blinding swinging dangerous mining equipment around and goring each other, which is a poor way to run a mine. But there was a fair share of optimism about the claim. The mine had a good couple of years, but the ore body was smaller than expected, and when management feared that the ore was running out they sold it to some English suckers for a ton of money, conveniently forgetting to tell them that there wasn’t much left down in the hole. Anyway, the mine ran out of ore not long after the sale and our friends across the ocean weren’t amused. Lawsuits were filed and various threats were made, but I don’t know how it turned out. It was in all the papers. Go read it for yourselves.

Anyway, Mr. Woodman had money and was good at finding mines, which was potent combination back in the wild west. Gold was the main draw to the town, but soon other earthy bonuses showed up. Lead (whose dirty little secret of being toxic hadn’t been discovered yet) was a big player in the area, as were tungsten, arsenic and bismuth, which are three minerals that have uses, but I couldn’t tell you what there are. In a few short years the Alvarado and Cane Springs mines produced $200,000 to $300,000 worth of valuables. One shoot of the Alvarado Mine alone produced $1,100 of gold per ton for a couple of months, which is sort of the mining equivalent winning a local hot dog eating contest at the county fair. But the good times can’t last forever and people got bored with Gold Hill and moved on. The mill was shipped off to some other site like some sort of bulky, mechanical orphan. Here’s what’s left of it….

The road up to the mill was covered in snow, so I didn’t try to get up there. Anyway it didn’t seem like there was going to be much to see, so this picture will have to do. The rest of the town had consisted of tents and cheap wooden structures (as opposed to now, where the town consists of mobile homes) so nothing is really left of the earliest phase Gold Hill other than the impressive foundation of the mill and the mines themselves.

The Alvarado Mine

The Gold Hill Mine

Rube Gold Mine

And various other mines that for whatever reason never deserved a name

And so things sat until 1916, when Archduke Ferdinand of Austria got shot and Europe decided to go to war over it. I speak, of course, of WWI, and as horrible as war is it is pretty great for the mining industry. Copper values shot through the roof, and Gold Hill was ready to serve. A rail line was laid to several of the larger mines, and in 1917 a million big ones worth of copper ore left Gold Hill for smelters in Salt Lake City. Schools were built, streets were named, puppies were patted playfully on the head, churches and libraries were set up, and, most importantly, a huge pool hall was built. It also served as city hall, but it seems that the pool hall use was more important, which is entertaining to me. The Gold Hill News (an equally creative name for a town newspaper) was set up and printed up steaming piles of news daily. The population boomed to 3,000 brave souls, and water had to be shipped in from other sources. If water wasn’t available, alternative sources of moisture could be found at the local saloon. From what I can tell, this seemed to be the route that most folks went. There were so many mines that folks used to build their outhouses over abandoned shafts, which seems like a pretty dangerous thing to do, but I guess you did what you had to back in the day. I guess this is a pretty good reason to not go into any of the abandoned mines you find out there. In addition to the shafts that also served as sewage plants, several shafts were located in the middle of the streets which probably adversely affected traffic flow. City planning didn’t seem to be too much of a concern to the good folks of Gold Hill. Most of the remaining buildings at Gold Hill seem to have come from this period of boom-townism. Which is to say, the two remaining buildings. This one…

And this one next to it. Someone was living in it, so I didn’t go in.

Here's how they used to look. Well, how they looked in the 80's, I guess.

As a ghost town the place is pretty disappointing. I guess there are probably more old foundations to be found on the nearby streets, but nothing really standing other than the impressive array of mobile homes that are parked all over the place. There was a dead bat though! Check out this little guy!

I think he was dead anyway. Who can really tell with bats. Anyway, someone also apparently dumped a bunch of cheese in the basement for the rats, which seemed like an unusually kind gesture. That Jethro, always looking out for the rats.


I wanted to get into the small safe that appeared to be located near the back of the store, but the lack of a floor and the somewhat dangerous looking nature of the roof made me decide that the building could keep its secrets. Hey Goodwin Mercantile Company, fix your damn floor!

Anyway, back to history, apparently someone once tried to rob the local railroad, and made off with a good $4, some mail, and the conductors pocketwatch. The mail and the watch were found in the bushes the next day. The $4 probably went towards some sort whiskey, or possibly a particularly cheap prostitute. Who knows with the old west. Anyway, the young bandits were caught a few days later and faced significant jail time for messing with the mail. Apparently mail fraud was a no-no to these people. Also they accidently shot someone in the leg. But it seems like the mail thing was the main problem. Sometimes you learn something about the old west that seems to take the glamour away a little.

As WWI carried on, the US found out that it needed more tungsten for some reason. I think it’s used to make steel, but I could be wrong. Also, unknown to most people is another war the US was waging at the same time as WWI. I speak of the war on the cotton boll weevil, this guy….

Apparently this cuddly little fella had gathered a few of its friends and went coo-coo for cotton balls. You don’t hear much about this war. It was discovered that arsenic will kill this little bugger (along with several other things) off in packs, so suddenly there was a large demand for the stuff. It just so happens that Gold Hill was up to its knees in arsenic, and without too much trouble the mines started to produce arsenic in huge amounts. So Gold Hill saved the day. But then in 1924 Uncle Sam found cheaper sources of arsenic and kicked Gold Hill to the curb. Slowly the town died once again, just like the all the cotton boll weevils that it had so mercilessly slaughtered years before. Makes you think. This is sad. Let’s look at the bat again.

Anyway, in 1938 the last train pulled out of Gold Hill, and 1940 the tracks were torn up. You can still see the railroad grade though. See?

They say that in 1940 that all the mines around Gold Hill managed to produce a single ounce of gold. Which, it turns out, is not enough to support a town. I don't know who "they" are, but they are probably better informed than I am.

And so, again, things sat until war once again came upon the US. WWII sprung up, and once again Gold Hill was momentarily useful. Arsenic and tungsten were needed for various arsenic and tungsten war things. I don’t know why it is that cotton boll weevil only shows up during times of war. Maybe they are better organized than we think. Either way, the Gold Hill boomed once again. Several apartment houses were built, the pool hall/city hall was repaired and reopened and a bowling alley was built. They even got their own post office and electric street lights! None of these things were apparent during my visit to the city. In 1945 the US had won the war against the Axis and the Weevils, and once again Gold Hill was told to get lost. The apartment houses were moved to other more popular towns with better skin, and the schools and post office were closed in 1946. By 1952 the telephone lines were gone and the population was down to 5 people.

As I said, there doesn’t appear to be much left from the ‘40’s. I think this old camper was from the forties.

Also this building/whatever

I didn’t see any electrical street lights though. So I guess you just have to imagine them.
We met a very nice lady out at Gold Hill who represented 25% of the total population. She told us a little about what’s left and didn’t seem at all irritated that we flagged her car over so we could pester her with questions. She didn’t seem to totally trust us city folks either and was seen driving around to the houses of the other 3 residents, probably to ready the troops if we got unruly. They would take us out like cotton weevils. Anyway, it seems to me that if you rounded up 5 or 6 people you could probably take over the city, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
So that’s Gold Hill. Not a lot to see unless you really like dank, cold holes in the ground. Which it turns out I do, so it was great for me. If you don’t, then it sucks to be you. Here are some more pictures of the hills surrounding Gold Hill. Was it really foggy that day? Or are you developing cataracts? Nah it was foggy. You should probably get your eyes checked anyway though. You can never be too careful.