The Legend of the Silver Bullet

Our scoutmaster Bert Whitney took us on many different activities. One was to the Potosi Mine. We drove from Boulder City, Nevada to the edge of where Las Vegas is now. There we left the main road that went to California and headed up into the mountains near there.  I’m pretty sure I could not find the road now, but the scoutmaster knew where it was. I think that he spent a great deal of time out in the desert looking around. He lived near there with his family when he was fairly young.

We drove through the desert for a ways and came to the backside of a mountain. The car was parked, and we started up a trail to the opening of the mine. It was quite a hike for me and for some of the other Scouts, but it seemed easy for our scoutmaster. We finally all arrived partway up the mountain to the front of a large opening into the mine. The hike up had been hot and somewhat hard, but as soon as we arrived in front of the mine, there was nice cool air coming out.

We went back into the mine, and it was light and cool. We enjoyed it especially after the hot hike up. The opening was large. It ran for probably 200 feet wide and fifty feet high. The mine then broke off into several tunnels. There were still rail tracks running across the floor of the mine and taking a downward angle to the other side of the mountain. Then it stopped, and the tracks stopped, and there was a dump where all of the rocks not being mined were deposited in a valley below the mine.

Old ore cart from Colorado

We found an old ore cart and set it up on the track and rode it back and forth along the rail. Towards the end of our stay at the mine, we loaded up on the sides of the cart and pushed it on down the track. We all jumped free of the cart as it came close to the end and then watched it fly past the end of the track and over the edge into the valley. It hit and bounced and just seem to keep going to the bottom of the canyon. It was neat to watch, especially for a bunch of young boys.

The early mining there was done by young men sent to that area by Brigham Young to mine for lead to be used in making bullets. The problem with it was that there was a black type of sludge that made it hard to mine the lead. It was later found that the sludge was silver. It has been said that the legend of the Lone Ranger came from bullets made from the Potosi Mine. Whether or not true, it was a great story to tell the Scouts.

We must have run around a lot because I remember all of us were pretty tired. I’m not sure if any of us ever thanked our scoutmaster, but we should have.  

 

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