Silver Peak (also Silverpeak) is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in Esmeralda County,

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

, United States. It lies along State Route 265, south of

U.S. Route 6 U.S. Route 6 (US 6) or U.S. Highway 6 (US 6), also called the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, honoring the American Civil War veterans association, is a main route of the United States Numbered Highway System. While it ...

and west of Goldfield, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

of Esmeralda County. It has a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

, with the ZIP code of 89047. The population of Silver Peak was 142 as of 2019.

Demographics

History

Silver Peak is one of the oldest mining communities in Nevada. It was founded near a well in 1864, two years after the founding of surrounding Esmeralda County, and one year after silver was discovered nearby and mining began. A 10

stamp mill A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of Mill (grinding), mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than Mill (grinding), grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking materia ...

was built in 1865, and a 20 stamp mill by 1867. The Silver Peak Railroad was built by the Pittsburgh Silver Peak Gold Mining Company after it bought a group of mining properties in 1906 and established a 100 stamp mill at Blair, Nevada, in 1907. Blair's mill closed in 1915, and Blair was a ghost town by 1920. Silver Peak maintained a population, however, even though it burned in 1948. State Historical Marker No. 155. In 1939, boxer Max Baer defeated "Big Ed" Murphy of Silver Peak in a one round fight at Silver Peak.

Climate

Silver Peak has a

cold desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...

: ''BWk'') with cold winters and hot summers.

Economy

Silver Peak lies near a

dry lake A dry lake bed, also known as a playa (), is a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceed recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkalin ...

bed that is rich in

lithium Lithium (from , , ) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard temperature and pressure, standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the ...

and other minerals. Initially salt was mined in the area. In 1906, Spurr reported that salt was mined for local use by digging a hole a foot or two deep until water was reached and then waiting until the water evaporated. It was claimed that the salt produced in this manner was 99% pure. During World War II, Clayton Marsh was explored for strategic minerals including

potash Potash ( ) includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water- soluble form.

and American Potash Corp. leased the marsh. In the 1950s, Leprechaun Mining (Clyde Kegel) acquired the leases. He determined that in addition to potassium, lithium was also present. Leprechaun Mining reached an agreement with Foote Minerals in 1964 and Foote reconfigured the silver mill and started production of lithium in 1967. In 1988, Cyprus Minerals acquired Foote and became Cyprus Foot Minerals. In 1998, Chemetall acquired the operation – the new company was called Chemetall Foote Corp. In 2004, Rockwood Holdings acquired the operation. In 2010, the mine was expanded to double the capacity of its

lithium carbonate Lithium carbonate is an inorganic compound, the lithium salt of carbonic acid with the chemical formula, formula . This white Salt (chemistry), salt is widely used in processing metal oxides. It is on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, Wor ...

production. The project was funded in part by a $28.4 million grant from the

U.S. Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear we ...

to expand and upgrade the production of lithium materials for advanced transportation batteries. In 2014, the Albemarle Corporation purchased Rockwood for $6.2 Billion. As of October 2021, the

Albemarle Corporation Albemarle Corporation is an American specialty chemicals manufacturing company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. It serves several different industries including Agriculture/Food, Automotive/EV, Aviation/Aerospace, Building/Construction, Con ...

Lithium Operation at Silver Peak employs around 100 people extracting heavy brine and is currently the only operating source of lithium in the United States, and supplying 1% of the world's output.

In popular culture

The town was featured on a show called "Welcome To Murdertown" which revolves around the disappearance and murder of Charlie Kinkle by local methamphetamine users, Jason Taaffe and Coleman Ward, who were delusional from years of methamphetamine use . During

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

's 1999 electric power crisis in the first major act of the power crisis causing an outage on March 25, 1999,

Enron Enron Corporation was an American Energy development, energy, Commodity, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was led by Kenneth Lay and developed in 1985 via a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both re ...

energy traders allegedly rerouted 2,900MW (megawatts) of electricity destined for California to this small Nevada community. This caused a large shortage on the California power grid because the largest power feeder (intertie) from this area to California had a capacity of 15MW (about 0.5% of the required wheeling capacity).

Education

Residents are zoned to the Esmeralda County School District for grades K-8. High school students in the entire county go to Tonopah High School of

Nye County School District Nye County School District (NCSD) provides public education for all grades in Nye County, Nevada, as well as 9th through 12th grade education for students living in Esmeralda County, due to its school district having no high school. The admin ...

References

External links

Photograph of the Black Mammoth Consolidated Mining Company's commissary, Mary Mine (Nev.), circa 1937
(University of Las Vegas)
Photograph of Silver Peak, Nevada; Title taken from image; postcard ca. 1925-1935
(University of Nevada, Reno) {{authority control Census-designated places in Esmeralda County, Nevada Census-designated places in Nevada Lithium mines in the United States Nevada historical markers Mining communities in Nevada