Lida
Esmeralda County, Esmeralda County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Lida. Known as a gathering point for Shoshone and Northern Paiute Indians, Lida Valley was the site of early prospecting in the 1860s.Later prospectors organized a mining district in 1867 and laid out the town in 1872. Soon stores, shops, stables and a post office were established. Some ore was milled locally, yet high grade ore ($500-$1,000 per ton) was treated at Austin or Belmont. After 1880 mining declined.Lida revived and thrived for three years during the turn-of-the-century Goldfield boom, but declined again in 1907. Mining efforts resumed a few years later and a small community existed here until World War I.
Erected by E. F. Denton
The Story
Set in a valley long used as a gathering place by Shoshone and Northern Paiute people, Lida began drawing prospectors in the 1860s, and by 1872 a proper town had been platted amid the stores, stables, and post office of a working mining district. The richest ore was too valuable to trust to local mills and was hauled to Austin or Belmont for treatment. After 1880 the camp faded, flared briefly during the turn-of-the-century Goldfield rush, and dwindled to a tiny community that hung on until World War I.
Why it matters
Lida is a classic Nevada boom-and-bust story, showing how Native gathering grounds became mining districts and how remote camps lived and died by the price and quality of their ore.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Goldfield boom
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ione
Nye County, NV
Ione Valley sustained a dense Indigenous population for roughly 5,000 years, and the Shoshone and Northern Paiute who lived here later practiced distinctive property and agricultural customs. When silver was struck in 1863, Ione City boomed to more than 600 residents and in 1864 became the first county seat of newly created Nye County. Its glory was brief—Belmont's wealth pulled away both the miners and, by 1867, the county seat—yet Ione proved resilient, never wholly deserted through decades of mining slumps.
Wilson Canyon
Lyon County, NV
Wilson Canyon and its mining district took their name from brothers David and "Uncle Billy" Wilson, who settled here in 1863 to work gold at Pine Grove and ranch in Mason Valley, eventually earning several million dollars. David, a California gold-rush veteran and Union Army soldier, became a prominent rancher before his death in 1915. Raised alongside the Wilson boys was a young Northern Paiute named Wovoka—who took the name Jack Wilson and in 1890 founded the Ghost Dance movement that swept the Great Plains with powerful spiritual and political force.
Palmetto
Esmeralda County, NV
Prospectors who mistook the local Joshua trees for palms gave this 1866 silver camp the hopeful name Palmetto. A 12-stamp mill chased the ore, but thin deposits killed the town more than once, even as fresh strikes briefly revived it. A 1903 rush swelled Palmetto to 200 tents and a full commercial street by 1906, only for the miners to drift away that same autumn, leaving lease work and a notable nearby talc deposit behind.
Goldfield
Esmeralda County, NV
After two decades of decline that drained a third of Nevada's population, the state's fortunes turned overnight with rich strikes at Tonopah and, in December 1902, here at Goldfield. Nevada-born prospectors Harry Stimler and Billy Marsh found gold ore, and from 1904 to 1918 Goldfield boomed into the state's largest city, peaking near 20,000 people with a railroad linking it to Las Vegas. Before the mines gave out, they yielded more than $86 million in precious metals.