Palmetto

Three prospectors found silver here in 1866 and named the camp Palmetto, having decided the Joshua trees nearby were a kind of palm. They were wrong about the trees and, soon enough, about the ore—a stamp mill went up but there was too little to feed it, and the camp emptied within a year. Palmetto died and came back three times; its biggest life, after 1903, filled a half-mile street with tents and businesses before the miners drifted off in 1906. Scant ruins remain in one of Nevada's emptiest corners.

What the plaque says

Thinking that local Joshua trees were related to palm trees, the 1866 prospectors named the mining camp Palmetto. Although a local 12-stamp mill worked the silver ore, the town died for lack of profitable material. New discoveries in the late 1860's brought Palmetto back to life, but once again meager deposits caused its demise. New prospecting in 1903 caused Palmetto to grow to a town of 200 tents on a platted town site. At its peak in 1906, the commercial street contained all the necessary mining camp businesses. Local miners drifted away in Autumn, 1906. Mining, on a lease basis, has been minimal since that time. An important talc deposit lies nearby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goldfield — 31 mi
  Once the largest city in Nevada, now a few hundred souls — the purest boom-and-bust in the West, with a castle courthouse still in use, a grand hotel dark since the war, and a desert full of upended cars.

More markers nearby

• Lida — 11 mi
• Gold Point — 22 mi
• Blair — 24 mi
• Fish Lake Valley — 28 mi