Where History Intersects Opportunity

Tonopah’s History Unfolded From A Singular Fortuitous Moment

Tonopah, Nevada’s old historic Mining town situated between Reno and Las Vegas, has a quirky past that includes Howard Hughes, scrappy property claims and heroic mining tales. Back in 1900, Tonopah was the setting of one of America’s major gold and silver booms–and it all started with a serendipitous moment of fury. As the story goes, Jim Butler realized his burro had gone missing. When he found him the next morning, he went to throw a rock at him but the rock was abnormally heavy. As it turns out the rock was made of pure silver, and Butler had just discovered the second largest silver strike in Nevada History.

For the next 40 years the mines pulled out millions of dollars of gold, silver, copper and lead. After a slow down during the Depression, the fire in 1942 and the closing of the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, people packed up and businesses closed up shop. Miners believed they had stripped Tonopah’s veins of all its silver and gold, so the town diminished from booming mining hub to ghost town (plus a clown motel). Today, we know differently. With advanced, more precise technology we can clearly identify and extract the remaining silver and gold from the veins.