Lost Horse Mine

Lost Horse Mine is a preserved gold-and-silver mine and stamp mill in the rocky hills off Keys View Road. Its timber mill, iron pulleys, tanks and scattered masonry are still visible, making it one of the park’s most rewarding stops for mining history. The site is fenced for safety; you see it from outside, not by walking among the buildings. It is not a quick roadside stop: even the shorter route is about four miles round trip.

J.D. Ryan bought out Johnny Lang’s partners in 1895 and brought a ten-stamp steam mill to the site the next year. Each stamp weighed 850 pounds and crushed ore around the clock; mercury-coated copper plates caught the gold. Water ran 3.5 miles from ranch wells through a two-inch pipeline, then steam engines pushed it uphill about 750 feet to power the mill. The timber cut for fuel left sparsely vegetated hillsides that are still part of the setting.

About 300 mines were developed in what is now the park, but few produced much. Lost Horse yielded more than 10,000 ounces of gold and 16,000 ounces of silver. Miners lost the ore-bearing vein at a fault in 1905; in 1931, they reprocessed 600 tons of leftover tailings and recovered a few hundred more ounces.

The mine’s early history has a campfire-story edge. As the story goes, Ryan noticed that the night shift produced far less gold than the day shift, hired a detective, and discovered Lang was keeping half of the gold amalgam. Lang sold his share and moved on to prospect nearby. Years later, he died of exposure along Keys View Road in winter 1925; local resident William Keys found and buried him across from the mine access road.

The timber frame, rusted wheels and scattered machinery make a good photo subject. Stay outside the fence and include some of the bare, rocky slope around the mill so the machinery sits in its desert setting.