I recently had the opportunity to spend a day exploring around Butte, Montana and was amazed by the amount of mining that has taken place there. The old-timers called Butte “the richest hill on earth” and had pretty good reasons for doing so.

Silver Peak is a small mining community in Esmeralda County in west-central Nevada, about 30 miles west of Goldfield. Although it’s fairly remote, it’s been an important mining center since the early days.

Many miners know that lead is very commonly associated with silver values, but the truth is that it is also associated with gold values in many locations as well.

A few months later, a young, greenhorn lawyer agreed to pay to have it assayed, and the quartz turned out to be rich in both gold and silver.