Lyell is the site of a historic gold mining town in the

Buller Gorge The Buller Gorge is a gorge located in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand. The Buller River flows through the deep canyon between Murchison and Westport. Land Information New Zealand lists two sections for the gorge, Upper Buller ...

in the

South Island The South Island ( , 'the waters of Pounamu, Greenstone') is the largest of the three major islands of New Zealand by surface area, the others being the smaller but more populous North Island and Stewart Island. It is bordered to the north by ...

of New Zealand. It lies on , northeast of Inangahua. Lyell was named by the geologist Julius von Haast after the British geologist

Charles Lyell Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known today for his association with Charles ...

, a friend of

Sir George Grey Sir George Grey, KCB (14 April 1812 – 19 September 1898) was a British soldier, explorer, colonial administrator and writer. He served in a succession of governing positions: Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, Gov ...

, whose writings had influenced

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

. The gold rush in Lyell began in 1862 when Māori prospectors found gold in Lyell Creek, a tributary of the Buller River. In 1869 two Italian miners, Antonio Zala and Giorgio Zanetti, discovered gold in quartz veins in the Lyell Creek area. The mine in this quartz reef was worked from 1872 until 1912. Gold in quartz reefs was successfully mined in only two places on the West Coast: Lyell and

Reefton Reefton is a small town in the West Coast, New Zealand, West Coast region of New Zealand, approximately northeast of Greymouth, New Zealand, Greymouth, in the Inangahua River valley. Ahaura is south-west of Reefton, Inangahua Junction is to ...

. The settlement grew quickly with a population of about 100 in 1863, despite the area being inaccessible, difficult to work and prone to flooding. In the 1870s Lyell had a main street, Cliff St, with banks, newspaper offices and hotels. The population grew to more than 2000 in the late 1880s. By 1901 the population was 90 with 40 children at the school and in 1905 the Alpine Extended Gold Mining Co Ltd still employed 60 people. Local newspapers were published during the height of settlement: the ''Lyell Argus and Matakitaki Advertiser'' from 1873 to 1882 and the ''Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette'' from 1881 to 1898. The newspaper office and other buildings in Cliff St were destroyed by a fire in 1896. One of the miners who worked at Lyell in the 1880s and 1890s was the Irish woman Bridget Goodwin, known as Biddy. The Italian miners later turned to dairy farming in the Lyell area. A small settlement at Lyell continued until the 1960s. The

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 ...

is now a campsite maintained by the Department of Conservation. None of the original buildings remain but a track from the campsite leads to a cemetery and an old stamping battery. A dray road that was built at the time of the gold working towards the Lyell Saddle is now the start of the Old Ghost Road, a mountain biking and walking trail, in length, that finishes at Seddonville.

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External links

*
''Lyell Walks''
Information on historic walking/cycling trails from the Department of Conservation, NZ.

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Further reading