Tumco Ghost Town

Tumco was a gold mining town, with a peak population of about 500 over a hundred years ago. The last mining done on the site in about 1950. What remains of the town is a BLM historic site, and motor vehicles are prohibited. Nearby is a 14-day camping area, and many signs of the mining done. Some of the vertical shafts have fences around them in various states of repair, and one of the easy to get to horizontal shafts has an iron grate in front of it. As with all such old mines, it is unsafe to enter them. The vertical shafts seem to be filling in, and some of the tunnels have collapsed.

Most of what is left of the town is stone, concrete, and brick building foundations. Large piles of rusting cans appear to be the remains of the town dump. There are two graveyards with only piles of rocks to mark the graves. The remains of huge vats that held cyanide are still there, and large amounts of reddish-brown mine tailings. All that glitters is mostly iron pyrite.