Jackrabbit

The story goes that a prospector threw a rock at a jackrabbit and found he was holding high-grade silver. True or not, Isaac Garrison located the Jack Rabbit claim in 1876, and the camp — briefly called Royal City — shipped ore that ran forty dollars a ton and sometimes two thousand. Production stalled in the 1880s until a fifteen-mile narrow-gauge line to Pioche opened in 1891 and woke the mines again. The district gave up somewhere between two and six million dollars before falling quiet for good after the First World War.

What the plaque says

Local legend attributes the discovery to the locator picking up a rock to throw at a jackrabbit and finding himself holding high grade silver. The Jack Rabbit District, named for the mine, was located in 1876 by Isaac Newton Garrison. Early mine production of the camp, at one time named Royal City, was about ten tons per day, carrying native silver in flakes, yielding about $40 per ton -- sometimes as high as $2000 per ton. Total production of the District is estimated at about $2,000,000 to $6,000,000. Mineral production declined during the 1880's, but when a fifteen-mile narrow gauge railroad was opened in 1891 between the Jackrabbit mine and Pioche, mining soon increased. After 1893 the mines fell silent except for several short periods of activity in 1906-07 and 1912-14.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pioche — 13 mi
  The silver camp that, by legend, out-killed the Old West — Boot Hill's boots-on graves, the graft-ridden Million-Dollar Courthouse, and an aerial tramway still slung over Main Street.
• Cathedral Gorge State Park — 21 mi
  A drained ancient lakebed eroded into buff-colored spires and narrow slot "caves" — one of Nevada's first state parks, and the gentle, otherworldly counterweight to the Silver Trails' ghost towns.

More markers nearby

• Pioche — 14 mi
• Bullionville — 22 mi
• Panaca Spring — 23 mi
• Panaca Mercantile — 24 mi