Golden is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in
Box Elder County,
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
, United States. It is located west of
Park Valley, near the southern base of the
Raft River Mountains
The Raft River Mountains are a mountain range in northern Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The mountains are located in the Raft River Division of the Minidoka Ranger District of the Sawtooth National Forest. The highest point is Bull Mou ...
.
History
In 1899 and 1900, several
gold ore-rich strikes were made in the Raft River Mountains, and the principal camp that grew around them was named Golden.
As the mining progressed, the ore changed from
gold
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
to
silver
Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...
, with quantities of up to per ton.
The population of Golden grew to an estimated 500 residents.
Decline
An American
financial crisis
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with Bank run#Systemic banki ...
, the
panic of 1907
The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis, was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange suddenly fell almost ...
, damaged the mining industry severely.
Legal tender
Legal tender is a form of money that Standard of deferred payment, courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment in court for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything ...
currency was replaced with nearly worthless
scrip
A scrip (or ''wikt:chit#Etymology 3, chit'' in India) is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit (finance), credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitative payment of employees un ...
, so the miners left.
The
general store
A general merchant store (also known as general merchandise store, general dealer, village shop, or country store) is a rural or small-town store that carries a general line of merchandise. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, someti ...
moved its wares to Park Valley and
Rosette
Rosette is the French diminutive of ''rose''. It may refer to:
Flower shaped designs
* Rosette (award), a mark awarded by an organisation
* Rosette (design), a small flower design
*hence, various flower-shaped or rotational symmetric forms:
** R ...
, and the town was abandoned.
Resurgence
In 1910, several mines reopened, and the town had a short resurgence, then a boom in 1920, when a silver-rich ore was struck in
Vipont
Vipont (''alias'' Vieuxpont) is the name of a prominent family in the history of Westmorland. According to Thomas
the name originated in France before 1066 as Vieuxpont ("Old Bridge"), List of Latinized names, Latinized to ''de Vetere Ponte'' ...
. A tramway was built from the Vipont Mine to a
concentrating mill, and 300 well-paid workers were hired.
Ore was shipped from the area into the 1940s.
See also
*
List of ghost towns in Utah
This is an incomplete list of ghost towns in Utah, a state of the United States.
Classification
Barren site
* Sites no longer in existence
* Sites that have been destroyed
* Covered with water
* Reverted to pasture
* May have a few dif ...
References
Ghost towns in Box Elder County, Utah
Ghost towns in Utah
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