Miners Delight: The Boom's Broken Promises

The 1870 census found 75 people at Hamilton City, 40 of them miners, against the panel's peak of about 100. What the Bureau of Land Management holds two miles east has more standing structures than any other site in the district: seventeen of log or rough lumber, seven cabins, a saloon, a meat house, a shaft house and three privies, listed on the National Register in June 1980. The mine on Peabody Hill, a quarter mile west of the town, lay idle from March 1882 into the 1900s and was tried again in 1907 and from 1932 to 1946.

What the plaque says

Miners Delight: The Boom's Broken Promises As the news of gold spread, the Sweetwater Mining District filled with miners who established Hamilton City about two miles east of here in 1867. The following year, the name of the town changed to Miners Delight, after a highly productive nearby mine. The Miners Delight mine produced the greatest wealth of any in the mining district while the town remained the smallest and most isolated. According to a 1916 government report, the Miners Delight mine and surrounding placers had produced over $2.5 million. The town's population peaked around 100 in 1868. Its residents built log cabins, saloons, general stores, a hotel, and a stamp mill. By 1870, the gold boom had ended. Over the next 70 years, the deserted town witnessed several mini-booms that brought a short-lived rush of people to Miners Delight. The last resident left in the 1970's, at which time the Bureau of Land Management purchased the town's buildings. Now, only ruins of the once booming town remain.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Pass City State Historic Site — 5.5 mi
  The Carissa lode built the town in a year; the mine outlived the boom by eight decades, and its mill runs again for visitors.
• Sinks Canyon State Park — 16 mi
  A river that vanishes into a limestone cave and comes back a quarter mile on, slower than it should, warmer, and with more water than went in.

More markers nearby

• Fort Stambaugh, 1870-1878 — 0.4 mi
• Atlantic City: Surviving the Bust — 1.8 mi
• The Atlantic City Project: The Iron Ore Boom and Bust — 2.0 mi
• South Pass and South Pass City — 5.0 mi