For various reasons mines can close in an instant, whether a bad accident killed half the mining team or legal troubles forced it to shut down, a mine can be forgotten as quickly as it can be found. There are supposed to be hundreds of “lost” mines around the world, with most of them turning out to be nothing more than rumours, but every now and then there’s a shred of truth to the tales.
Here’s a few of the most well know and sought after lost mines in North America:
1) The Lost Dutchman Mine – Arizona
The most well known lost mine on the list and also the most sought after, with an estimated 8000 people each year searching for it. The story goes that a German immigrant named Jacob Waltz found the mine but kept its location a secret to save it for himself, and after presenting some gold ore he claimed to have found there to the local fort, he soon turned up dead before he could tell anyone where it was.
The other version goes that the local doctor helped a wounded Indian when in the wilderness one day, and as a reward they took him blindfolded to the mine, telling him he could take as much as he could carry. He was returned to the local fort before his blindfold was removed and was left standing there with a load of high grade gold ore he didn’t know the source of.
There are numerous other stories of this mine but to this day no one has come close to finding the source. One of the stories talks about how the last person to mine it boarded the entrance shaft up and filled it with dirt, suggesting its to deep to find with a metal detector.
2 The Lost Padre Mine – South California
Apparently this silver mine was active between 1824 and 1828 and produced a huge amount of wealth for its owners, which is believed to have been the Catholic church. For extra funding they built a series of secret mines they wouldn’t declare publicly, so they didn’t have to pay anything on what they produced.
These kind of stories are normally nothing more than rumours, but there is some documented partial evidence that it exists. There are numerous records throughout history that mention mining operations in the area, and other prospectors finding the remains of old smelters and other mining outbuildings.
The reason it was abandoned is unknown, as it was supposed to be a secret the church didn’t keep any public records on it. Perhaps it was mined dry, or perhaps it was due to legal problems or the threat of having to pay a ton of taxes to the American government on their special silver supply.
Apart from some small fragments of silver being found in the area and records of mining buildings that have long been destroyed, no one has found any signs of the lost Padre mine, but that doesn’t stop hundreds of people searching for it each year.
3 Swifts silver mine – Kentucky
All information of this mine comes from an Englishman named Jonathan Swift who’s story was released in an article in the 1886 edition of Harper’s Magazine. Apparently Swift came across a wounded bear in the wilderness which he followed to a long narrow cave. Within the cave he found a thick vein of silver in one of the walls and spent the next 9 years making trips there to mine it all on his own.
Apparently he came into the local town carrying silver bars and freshly minted coins, and he’s even said to have buried a load of it because he was producing so much he couldn’t even sell it all.
Eventually Swift went blind from an illness and wasn’t able to located the mine again, and since he remembered the way to it in his head, he couldn’t accurately describe its location.
4 The Reagan’s lost gold mine – Texas
in 1887 the Reagan family lived on a small ranch in the Texas outback and raised horses and cattle. For some cheap labour one of the brothers hired a man named William Kelly who was only 14 at the time. He was a black servant working on a white ranch in Texas during the 1800’s, so needless to say he wasn’t exactly seen as valuable by his employer.
One day William went to the family with a rock he had found that contained gold ore, but was met with rude remarks and laughed at. He tried the next day to convince the family to look at the ore but again was ignored, so he went into town and asked a local blacksmith he knew to have a look.
The Reagan’s then received a letter stating the gold ore was of extremely high grade and would be immensely valuable to the family, but unfortunately William wasn’t around to tell them where it was. There’s 2 stories of what happened to William, with the first being that for some reason the Reagan’s killed him and dumped his body in the Rio Grande, and the other claims William stole a horse and ran, never to be seen again.
The Reagan’s apparently spent the rest of their lives searching for the mine but with no success. There have been several expeditions to try and find the mine over the years, with the most serious being in 1899 when a team were offered $10,000 to find it, an enormous amount in those days, but no mine was ever found.
5 The Lost Cement Mine – California
Even though its called the lost cement mine, this one is supposed to be another very rich gold deposit. The story goes that in 1857, 2 men found the deposit while crossing the Sierra Nevada in Eastern California were they came across some red coloured rock near the Owens river.
The rock appeared to have gold ore inside and one of the finders later gave it to a doctor in exchange for treating his tuberculosis, along with a rough location of the mine. The doctor never found it and neither did any of the people he sent looking for it.
A series of newspaper articles were released in 1879 talking about the deposit and how it was secretly mined for years. The articles claim it was mined dry and all above ground buildings were destroyed to prevent anyone from knowing. It goes without saying that no one has come close to finding the remains of the mine, an if it was even there to begin with.
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