Lida

A mining camp in Lida Valley

Lida is a former mining town in Esmeralda County, on State Route 266 in western Nevada. Nevada State Historical Marker No. 157 describes Lida Valley as a contact point for Shoshone and Northern Paiute people and the site of early prospecting in the 1860s. Prospectors organized a mining district in 1867 and laid out the town in 1872. The marker says stores, shops, stables and a post office followed.

Destination4x4, a ghost-town guide, adds that the townsite was organized in March 1872 and that a post office was authorized in March 1873. Rider Magazine says the post office opened in 1873 and closed in 1932. Destination4x4 lists steam-powered mills built near local springs, including a five-stamp mill and an eight-stamp mill.

Ore, decline and the Goldfield revival

Some ore was milled locally. The marker says high-grade ore, worth $500 to $1,000 per ton, was treated at Austin or Belmont. Destination4x4 says freight arrived from the rail station at Wadsworth and that supplies came from Silver Peak over a newly built road at $100 per ton.

Mining declined after 1880. Destination4x4 counts only 10 businesses in town by the 1880s. The marker says Lida revived for about three years during the Goldfield boom, declined again in 1907, and kept a small community until World War I. For 1905, Destination4x4 describes a chamber of commerce, a weekly newspaper, stage service to Goldfield, and a pipeline carrying spring water to Goldfield. It also reports that litigation over important properties hampered growth. That site lists a population of 300 but gives no date for the figure.

Visiting today

The sources agree that little is left to see and that the town is private. Destination4x4 says the site is now on private property. Rider Magazine describes State Route 266 as two-lane pavement from Lida Junction on US 95. Its author, who rode in from Gold Point, calls the town all private property, with “not much to see, unless I want to trespass” and only mailboxes at the entrance. A web page on schweich.com, written from online research in mid-2004, says the townsite’s 124 lots were then owned by one local cattle rancher and that the wider ranch, including the Lida, Pigeon Spring and Palmetto sites, was offered for sale. That ownership may have changed since.

Because the land is private, stay on public roads and do not enter fenced property or occupied buildings. Dirt roads branch off the highway, and conditions vary, so check with the Bureau of Land Management or the county before leaving pavement. Leave any artifacts where they are.