This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2021) |
Lookout City | |
---|---|
Coordinates: 36°14′45″N117°26′05″W / 36.24583°N 117.43472°W | |
Country | United States |
State | California |
County | Inyo County |
Elevation | 3,579 ft (1,091 m) |
Lookout City is a former settlement in the Mojave Desert, in Inyo County, California. [1] It lay at an elevation of 3579 feet (1091 m).
In 1875 rich deposits of silver-lead ore were discovered in the Argus Range on top of Lookout mountain. The discovery was named the Modoc, and was sold to a group of investors which included George Hearst, the famed mining engineer, U.S. Senator, and father of William Randolph Hearst. (He was also the great-great grandfather of Patty Hearst.)
The Modoc Consolidated Mining Company was formed with the Modoc mine as the principal mine. Together with the discovery of other nearby mines, which included the Minnietta Belle below Lookout Mountain, these mines formed the basis for the Modoc District with the townsite of Lookout located on top of Lookout Mountain.
The town of Lookout consisted of 2 general stores, 3 saloons, company offices, and as many as 30 other wood and stone structures. By 1876 two 60 ton furnaces and a 10-stamp mill were running and production was quoted as running 160 silver-lead bars per day. The bars averaged 90 lbs. each and assayed around $400.00. By the end of 1876 Remi Nadeau's Cerro Gordo Freighting Company had hauled 10,000 bars worth some $4,000,000 over the Bullion Trail which was originally built for the ore of the Cerro Gordo Mines. Remi Nadeau needed a faster route for his teams, so he constructed the Nadeau "Shotgun" road across the Panamint Valley and over the Slate Range to meet the Bullion Trail south of China Lake.
To supply the furnaces with charcoal, ten charcoal kilns were built in Wildrose Canyon 25 miles away in the Panamint Range, and a steady stream of burros delivered charcoal in sacks to Lookout City via a pack trail on the east side of Lookout Mountain. The U.S. Bureau of Mines reported that total production during the period 1875 through 1890 amounted to $1,900,000 from the Modoc Mine alone. [1]
Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley.
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Lone Pine. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to desiccate by 1926. In 2006, 5% of the water flow was restored. As of 2013, it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.
The Panamint Range is a short rugged fault-block mountain range in the northern Mojave Desert, within Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, eastern California. Dr. Darwin French is credited as applying the term Panamint in 1860 during his search for the fabled Gunsight Lode. The orographic identity has been liberally applied for decades to include other ranges.
The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada, which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States and named after American miner Henry Comstock.
Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California.
Panamint City is a ghost town in the Panamint Range, near Death Valley, in Inyo County, California, US. It is also known by the official Board of Geographic Names as Panamint. Panamint was a boom town founded after silver and copper were found there in 1872. By 1874, the town had a population of about 2,000. Its main street was one mile (1.6 km) long. Panamint had its own newspaper, the Panamint News. Silver was the principal product mined in the area. The town is located about three miles northwest of Sentinel Peak. According to the National Geographic Names Database, NAD27 latitude and longitude for the locale are 36°07′06″N117°05′43″W, and the feature ID number is 1661185. The elevation of this location is identified as being 6,280 feet AMSL. The similar-sounding Panamint Springs, California, is located about 25.8 miles at 306.4 degrees off true north near Panamint Junction.
The Silver Valley is a region in the northwest United States, in the Coeur d'Alene Mountains in northern Idaho. It is noted for its mining heritage, dating back to the 1880s.
The Katahdin Iron Works is a Maine state historic site located in the unorganized township of the same name. It is the site of an ironworks which operated from 1845 to 1890. In addition to the kilns of the ironworks, the community was served by a railroad and had a 100-room hotel. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.
Silver mining in the United States began on a major scale with the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1858. The industry suffered greatly from the demonetization of silver in 1873 by the Coinage Act of 1873, known pejoratively as the "Crime of 73", but silver mining continues today.
The Cerro Gordo Mines are a collection of abandoned mines located in Cerro Gordo in the Inyo Mountains, Inyo County, near Lone Pine, California. Mining operations spanned 1866 to 1957, producing high grade silver, lead, zinc ore, and more rarely gold ore and copper ore. Some ore was smelted on site, but larger capacity smelters were eventually constructed along the shore of nearby Owens Lake.
Forest City is a ghost town in Utah County, Utah, United States. It is located in the valley of Dutchman Flat in the upper part of American Fork Canyon, in the Uinta National Forest. A silver mining town just over the mountain from Alta, Forest City was inhabited about 1871–1880. The town grew up around the smelter that was built to process ore from the canyon's mines. The American Fork Railroad, which was intended to serve Forest City and the smelter, stopped short of its destination due to engineering difficulties. Transportation costs rose too high for the mines to continue operating profitably. As the smelter, mines, and railroad closed down, Forest City was abandoned.
The Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, opened on October 17, 1875, was a steam-powered rail line which ran between the Santa Monica Long Wharf and 5th and San Pedro streets in downtown Los Angeles.
A metallurgical assay is a compositional analysis of an ore, metal, or alloy, usually performed in order to test for purity or quality.
The Jackson Mine is an open pit iron mine in Negaunee, Michigan, extracting resources from the Marquette Iron Range. The first iron mine in the Lake Superior region, Jackson Mine was designated as a Michigan State Historic Site in 1956 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The Lake Superior Mining Institute said, the mine "is attractive in the iron ore region of Michigan and the entire Lake Superior region, because of the fact it was here that the first discovery of iron ore was made, here the first mining was done, and from its ore the first iron was manufactured." Multiple other mines soon followed the Jackson's lead, establishing the foundation of the economy of the entire region. The mine is located northwest of intersection of Business M-28 and Cornish Town Road.
The Schoolcraft Furnace site is an abandoned iron furnace site located just east of Munising, Michigan, within the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore near the Munising Falls Visitor Center. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. It is also known as the Munising Furnace.
Plants for the production of lead are generally referred to as lead smelters. Primary lead production begins with sintering. Concentrated lead ore is fed into a sintering machine with iron, silica, limestone fluxes, coke, soda ash, pyrite, zinc, caustics or pollution control particulates. Smelting uses suitable reducing substances that will combine with those oxidizing elements to free the metal. Reduction is the final, high-temperature step in smelting. It is here that the oxide becomes the elemental metal. A reducing environment pulls the final oxygen atoms from the raw metal.
Iron mining in the United States produced 48 million metric tons of iron ore in 2019. Iron ore was the third-highest-value metal mined in the United States, after gold and copper. Iron ore was mined from nine active mines and three reclamation operations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Utah. Most of the iron ore was mined in northern Minnesota's Mesabi Range. Net exports were 3.9 million tons. US iron ore made up 2.5 percent of the total mined worldwide in 2015. Employment as of 2014 was 5,750 in iron mines and iron ore treatment plants.
Elgin Bryce Holt was an American geologist, mine owner and engineer, amateur scientist, anthropologist and entrepreneur who reorganized and managed the Cerro de Plata Mining Company in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico.
The British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company (BTCIC) was an iron mining and smelting company that operated from 1874 to 1878 in Northern Tasmania, Australia. It was formed by floating the operations of a private company, the Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company that operated between 1871 and 1874.