White Knob | |
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| Location | Custer County, Idaho |
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| Nearest city | Mackay, Idaho |
| Coordinates | 43°53′59.2″N114°41′09.8″W / 43.899778°N 114.686056°W Coordinates: 43°53′59.2″N114°41′09.8″W / 43.899778°N 114.686056°W |
| Built | 1884 |
| NRHP reference No. | 76000671 [1] |
White Knob, Idaho is a ghost town in Custer County, Idaho. It is situated on Mine Hill between the town of Mackay, Idaho and the White Knob Mountains in the Pioneer Mountains.
In 1879, copper was discovered in the White Knob Mountains near current day Mackay, Idaho. White Knob began as a mining town in this new Alder Creek Mining District. [2] The electric railway of the White Knob Copper Co. and subsequently an aerial cable tramway were used to transport the ore from White Knob to the smelter at the railway station in Mackay. The town was home to a school, a general store, and post office. The mine closed in 1928 prompting the decline of the town as more residents were living in Mackay. The school was closed in 1932.
In 1999 the Mackay Historical Preservation Committee was formed and secured a $250,000 award toward preserving the White Knob and Mine Hill site. They have since reinforced the tram towers, restored the Shay Railroad Trestle, restored several buildings, and installed informative signs and markers along an established trail. [3]
White Knob is listed as a ghost town on the National Historical Register. It is managed by the South Custer Historical Society and the White Knob Historical Preservation Committee of Mackay, ID, and is accessible to the public by foot, ATV, horseback, and truck. Remaining features of the current site are old road beds, restored railroad trestle, restored and derelict cabins, mill and smelter site, aerial cable tramway towers and headhouse, and grave sites. [4] The extensive site is currently owned by the Bureau of Land Management, private individuals, mining interests, and the Salmon-Challis National Forest. A self-guided tour is accessible to the public from Memorial Day through Labor Day. [5] [6]
Jerome is a town in the Black Hills of Yavapai County in the U.S. state of Arizona. Founded in the late 19th century on Cleopatra Hill overlooking the Verde Valley, Jerome is located more than 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above sea level. It is about 100 miles (160 km) north of Phoenix along State Route 89A between Sedona and Prescott. Supported in its heyday by rich copper mines, it was home to more than 10,000 people in the 1920s. As of the 2010 census, its population was 444. It is now known for its tourist attractions, such as its "ghost town" status and local wineries.
The City of Black Hawk is a Home Rule Municipality in Gilpin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 118 at the 2010 United States Census, making Black Hawk the least populous city in Colorado. The tiny city is a historic mining settlement founded in 1859 during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. Black Hawk is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area.
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Captains Flat is a town in the Southern Tablelands of rural New South Wales, Australia, in Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council. It is south of Queanbeyan. Captains Flat township is bounded by the non-urban parts of the locality of Captains Flat in the north, east and west, and Captains Flat Road, the Molonglo River and Foxlow Street in the south.
Keweenaw National Historical Park is a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Established in 1992, the park celebrates the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of 2009, it is a partly privatized park made up of two primary units, the Calumet Unit and the Quincy Unit, and 21 cooperating "Heritage Sites" located on federal, state, and privately owned land in and around the Keweenaw Peninsula. The National Park Service owns approximately 1,700 acres (690 ha) in the Calumet and Quincy Units. Units are located in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.
Sewell is an uninhabited Chilean mining town located on the slopes of the Andes in the commune of Machalí in Cachapoal Province, Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins Region, at an altitude of between 2,000 and 2,250 metres. In 2006, it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is known as a former company town, developed by Braden Copper Company for housing the workers associated with the operations of El Teniente, the largest underground copper mine in the world.
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The Ferris-Haggerty Mine Site was one of the richest components of the Grand Encampment Mining District in Carbon County, Wyoming. The site was first exploited by Ed Haggerty, a prospector from Whitehaven, England, in 1897 when he established the Rudefeha Mine that would later be known as the Ferris-Haggerty Mine on a rich deposit of copper ore. Haggerty was backed by George Ferris and other investors, of whom all but Ferris dropped out. The partners sold an interest to Willis George Emerson, who raised investment funding for improvements to the mine. These facilities included an engineering feat of its day by developing a 16-mile (26 km) aerial tramway to carry high grade copper mined at the Ferris-Haggerty Mine (FHM) over the Continental Divide to the smelter in Encampment. The tramway was longest aerial tramway the world had ever seen. The mine was eventually acquired by the North American Copper Company for 123 billion. By 1904 the mine had produced $1.4 million in copper ore, and was sold to the Penn-Wyoming Copper Company. However, even with copper prices peaking in 1907, the company had difficulty making a profit from the remote mine site. The company was over-capitalized and under-insured and was suffered devastating fires at the mine site in March 1906 and May 1907 which halted production. Business disputes and a fall in copper prices prevented re-opening of the mine even after it was rebuilt. Machinery was salvaged after a foreclosure in 1913. A total of 23 million pounds of copper ore was extracted from the mine during its life.
The Boston Wyoming Smelter Site was the site of a copper smelter that processed ores from the nearby Grand Encampment Mining District in Carbon County, Wyoming in the early 20th century. The site includes the former town of Rudefeha and is near Encampment, Wyoming. The smelter was constructed in 1902 by Grand Encampment promoter Willis George Emerson, connected to the main Ferris-Haggerty Mine location by a 16-mile (26 km) aerial tram over the Continental Divide. The smelter initially produced matte, an intermediate product in copper refining. In 1903 it was upgraded to produce blister copper. Power for the blowers needed for the blister refining process came from a water turbine at the end of a 4-foot (1.2 m) diameter wood-stave pipe from the South Fork of the Encampment River, 4 miles (6.4 km) away. The smelter could process 300 to 400 tons of ore a day.
The Britannia Mines Concentrator is a National Historic Site of Canada. The large, inclined gravity mill was built on the northwest side of Mount Sheer to assist the transfer of copper ore through the chemical and mechanical processes of the plant. It is a landmark in Britannia Beach, British Columbia some forty-five kilometers north of Vancouver.
The International Smelting and Refining Company was a subsidiary of Anaconda Copper which operated primarily out of the International Smelter near Tooele, Utah. The International Smelter began operation in 1910 as a copper producer handling ores from Bingham Canyon and was expanded into a lead smelting operation in 1912. Copper smelting finished at International in 1946, and the lead smelter shut down in January 1972. The closure of the smelter would lead to the associated Tooele Valley Railway to be shut down ten years later in 1982. The company also handled several other Anaconda owned interests. After the shut down of several of the International Smelting sites, environmental reclamation has been performed by Anaconda Copper's successor company ARCO and the EPA Superfund program.
The electric railway of the White Knob Copper Co., Ltd. was operated by the White Knob Copper Co. at White Knob near Mackay, Idaho, in connection with its mines, having 7.1 miles (11.4 km) of railroad, two electric locomotives and 40 ore cars. The difference in level over the seven miles was 2,100 feet (640 m), an average of 6 per cent. Eighty tons of ore were handled by each train.
Municipalities and communities of Custer County, Idaho, United States | ||
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| Cities |  | |
| Unincorporated communities | ||
| Ghost towns | ||