Leslie and David's Wanderings: 9 July 2023 South Pass City

Thursday, July 13, 2023

9 July 2023 South Pass City

After yesterdays rains, we took our time getting out to give the roads a chance to dry out. We headed back west to South Pass and took a well-maintained gravel road to historic South Pass City. A former mining town, the town has been a ghost town since the early 1930s when the gold mines shut down. We were surprised as we pulled up to the town to find out they were having their Gold Rush Festival. Our great luck! So we paid our entry fees and strolled through the old historic buildings, vendors, and food trucks. We watched as they blew an anvil up into the air and robbers road into town shooting their guns in the air and robbing The Exchange. People were down in the creek panning for gold, live western music, live demonstrations of pioneer crafts, and plenty of historic photos to enjoy. After the Festival, we went up to the Carrisa Gold Mine (now owned by the state as a historic site) and took a tour of the mine machinery buildings. The mine itself, five levels going 496 feet deep, is now mostly flooded. The mine first started operations in 1868 and went through several boom and bust cycles before finally closing in 1949. The only owners that made money from the mine was the first owners in the 1860s. Every owner since has lost money. The gold is mixed in with iron and other minerals and it took over 2 tons of rock to get ½ a once of gold. The mine had to run 10-14 days to produce one 80 once gold bar worth $2500 in the 1940s. Back then you were only allowed to sell gold to the government and they set the price. It was interesting to see the process and machines for extracting the metal from the rock. On the way back to the Wanderer, we took a dirt road through Red Canyon. It was beautiful! The road was in pretty good shape after the rains although we did have to crawl through a couple of muddy/flooded areas that coated the wheels with red mud. They almost look rusted.