Gold Hill

Gold Hill boomed whenever the world needed something it happened to have, and emptied every time that need passed. Gold and copper built it in the 1890s; when the richest ore ran out, the town nearly died. Then the First World War wanted arsenic to poison the boll weevil chewing through Southern cotton, and Gold Hill, sitting on a mountain of it, swelled to three thousand people almost overnight. Cheap foreign arsenic killed the boom by 1925. A tungsten spurt in the next war revived it briefly. Today a handful of residents keep the desert from taking it entirely.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Round Canyon Pony Express Station — 8.5 mi