Mining Booms and Ghost Towns

Historians have concluded that the legends of lost mines and treasures of early missionaries are nineteenth-century fabrications, and that mining was not of major importance on this part of the Spanish and Mexican frontier. Mining took on greater importance after the region became part of the United States in 1854.

Repeated mining rushes for gold and silver created boomtowns that briefly flourished and then were abandoned. Although a few gold discoveries received considerable interest, silver was the main object of mining in the area. At the end of the 1800s, a collapse in the value of silver and the new demand for electrical wire shifted the area’s focus to copper mining. For more than a century, the region has been one of the most important producers of copper in the world.