Broken Hills

A two-man silver-lead camp

Broken Hills sits at about 5,371 feet in Mineral County, near Gabbs Valley and the low range of the same name, which straddles the Mineral and Churchill county line. In 1913 two English prospectors, Joseph Arthur and James Stratford, found silver-lead ore here. Their names turn up in several spellings in later accounts, including Aurthur and Statford. Because the pair held the most promising ground, the rush of miners that followed the discovery stalled, and the camp never grew the way neighboring strikes did.

Arthur and Stratford worked the claims from 1913 to 1920. Accounts credit them with about $68,000 in ore over those years; one source frames that figure as what each man received rather than the total. At its height, roughly 1915 to 1920, the settlement held a few hundred people and had stores, a hotel, saloons, and a school. Water was hauled in from Lodi Valley, about 10 miles away, and ore went to Bruner’s 50-ton mill at Phonolite, about 12 miles off.

Rice, the Quartz Mountain revival, and the long tail

Around 1920 the partners sold to George Graham Rice, a mining-stock promoter who sold shares in the property under the Broken Hills Silver Corporation. By the commonly repeated figures, about $75,000 of stockholder money went into the mine and it returned only about $7,000. The company failed soon after. A post office ran from December 1, 1920, to October 15, 1921.

Broken Hills got a second, shorter boom in 1926. Prospectors were drawn to Quartz Mountain, just across the valley, after word spread of George Wingfield’s interest in claims there, and Broken Hills, revived by that rush, reopened its post office on June 16, 1926. That office closed for good on February 28, 1935. The 1930 census counted fewer than 20 residents and the 1940 census counted 12. Limited mining kept going anyway; the district produced about $180,000 between 1935 and 1940, and Nevada Expeditions notes some minor work as recently as the 1980s.

One story from the revival year is still marked on the ground. In 1926 an elderly prospector, Matt Costello (1866 to 1926), sold a claim group for about $1,500. Friends who had not seen him for several days found him dead in his cabin, and he was buried nearby. The cabin is gone, but his fenced grave remains.

Visiting today

Little of the town is left. Recent visitors describe a few foundations at the townsite, along with mine workings, shafts, a headframe, small outbuildings, tailings, and scattered debris. Costello’s grave is near the camp. Treat the grave and the ruins as a historic site and leave everything as you find it. Open shafts and old headframes are unstable, so stay out of them and keep well back from collar edges.

The site is reached on dirt roads in the Gabbs Valley area. Accounts of road conditions differ, so check current conditions before going, and expect no services or water.