Virginia City, NV mine (#1147)

Crown Point mine, if memory serves. Mining activity has continued off and on to the present. The big open pit above Gold Hill on the west dates from the 70s, and there is a currently active mine farther south on the Gold Hill road. Here and there along the road you can also see wooden cyanide vats, which probably date from the early 20th century. The cyanide process was invented ca. 1890, after the heyday of the classic Comstock. For decades all over the West there was a cottage industry of reprocessing tailings from the original mining activity with cyanide, which recovered most of the values that had gone right thru the mill!