Potosi

A Mormon lead mine on Potosi Mountain

Potosi is a mine and a former camp on Potosi Mountain in Clark County. NVexpeditions says it holds the title of the first lode mine in Nevada. Nevada Magazine calls it the first ghost town in Nevada. That article says history does not reveal when the mine was discovered and that no maps or records of the Spanish period are known. It notes that some historians speculate about Franciscan missionaries searching for silver in 1776, and it describes the rosary and coins reported from the area as stories, not documented evidence. It dates the modern recorded history to 1855, when Mormon colonists came upon the mine.

The 1974 National Register nomination says Nathaniel V. Jones was sent by Brigham Young to recover ore from the “mountain of lead.” Jones began lead mining on August 21, 1856, and by September 10 a furnace had been built and smelting had started. Wood had to be hauled seven miles, and supplies came 230 miles from Parowan and Cedar City, Utah. Not more than a dozen loads, about 9,000 pounds of lead, were recovered before the mine was abandoned in January 1857.

The sources differ on details. Nevada Magazine says the colonists left on February 2, 1857. NVexpeditions says a Paiute guide told Mormons at the Las Vegas Mission about the deposit, and that the zinc content of the ore caused difficulties.

Silver, then zinc

NVexpeditions says the Colorado Mining Company built a large smelter at Potosi Spring in 1861, that the camp grew to about 100 people, and that it died before the end of 1863. The nomination also records a brief reopening for silver from 1861 to 1863. NVexpeditions adds that the Silver State Mining Company reopened the mine in 1870 and that it was then called the Comet.

Both secondary sources connect later activity to the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. Nevada Magazine dates its building to 1905, and NVexpeditions dates its completion to 1906. Nevada Magazine says Empire Zinc Company took over the mine in 1913, cut its workforce by late spring 1919, and shut the mine and began dismantling it by fall. The nomination says that between about 1914 and 1917 Potosi was Nevada’s largest zinc producer, though the scanned digits are garbled. Nevada Magazine says the International Smelting Company leased the mine in 1926 and abandoned it after a few months.

Production totals disagree widely. The nomination says later work by lessors pushed production to an estimated $41.5 million. NVexpeditions gives $4.5 million in lead, silver and zinc. The sources do not explain the gap.

What remains

The nomination places the portal on the west face of a nearly perpendicular cliff 150 feet high. It describes a large wooden structure holding mining machinery at the entrance, remains of an ore railway installed later, and hoisting equipment at the top of an 800-foot hill. It says the camp at Potosi Spring, half a mile north and 700 feet lower, has only foundations. NVexpeditions, in photographs dated April 2024, shows the foundations of a calcining furnace that it dates to about 1915 and credits to Empire Zinc, plus an aerial tramway and baby gauge railway.

Visiting today

Nevada Magazine places Potosi 35 miles southwest of Las Vegas, reached by an unpaved dirt road, and advises a Jeep or pickup truck. That article ran in 1968 and gives no current conditions. The nomination lists the owner as International Smelting Co. and the public domain, so land status may be mixed. Road conditions and access change, so check with the land manager before going. The mine works are old and may include open shafts and unstable structures, so stay out of them. Leave all artifacts and structures where they are.