It's a story with which we're all familiar. Poor Kentucky man shoots at a deer, instead hits oil, gets rich, and moves his family to Beverly Hills, where he --
Oh wait, that's not the story.
Poor Kentucky man goes looking for deer and shoots one, finds some heavy rock which he thinks is lead. Melts some into bullets. Later discovers it to contain silver. Lots of silver. Rush causes excitement and mills to be built. Ore is lousy-- never finds the original spot where the rich ore came from. Everyone disappointed. Town dies.
The story begins with James Allen Hardin, an emigrant traveling west along the Lassen-Applegate route in 1849. While in the Black Rock region, Hardin found a heavy rock that he initially believed to be lead. He carried approximately 30 or 40 pounds of it back to camp, where some was melted and made into bullets.According to later accounts, the material left behind was eventually recognized as containing silver. Hardin reportedly smelted part of a sample into a small metallic button and sent it to San Francisco for examination.
By the time this article was publihed in 1875, it was already ancient history
THE HARDIN LEAD.
Discovered by Emigrants Twenty Years Ago, and yet not Found—Hardin and Others Now Searching for the Bonanza.
Very many years ago, in 1849, we believe, an emigrant named Hardin while away from his train hunting in the vicinity of Blackrock, on the Lassen or Cape Horn, as it has since been appropriately called, route to California, discovered what he then believed to be a lead mine. He took a chunk of the metal to camp with him from which he made bullets for his trusty rifle One or more of these bullets were taken to California, where an assayer in casually examining them discovered that they contained a large percentage of silver. The discovery created no excitement at the time; as Hardin and California miners paid little or no attention to that metal, knowing nothing and caring less for anything else than gold, in the metallic line. Years passed on and the discovery of the Washoe mines and the excitement created by the Comstock, recalled the assayer's remark to the mind of Hardin, who told the tale of his discovery to others. A party was organized in 1861 or '62 in California, of which Hardin was a member, for the purpose of exploring the Blackrock country, and locating the mine from which he had obtained his bullet material. Hardin, of course, supposed he could guide the party direct to the locality, but in this he was mistaken, and after days and weeks of fruitless search, it was given up, and the party returned to California. Since then several expeditions have been organized, with Hardin as leader, for the purpose of finding the mine, which is supposed to be fabulously rich; but all of them, like the first, after searching in vain for the treasure, were unable to find a trace of it, and gave up the search in despair. A prospector who accompanied Hardin on one of these expeditions, informed the writer that he believed from the appearance of the country and the description given of the locality by Hardin that the lead had been covered up by a cloud burst, and that it was useless to attempt to find it. Money Makers, who have heard Hardin describe it, have been making periodical pilgrimages to Blackrock for years, but have never found a trace of the mine. Since the bursting of the bubble which assumed such gigantic proportions through the manipulations of Isenberg and the amalgamator at Dall's mill in Washoe Valley, several years ago, the idea of finding the Hardin ledge has been abandoned by all but Hardin himself, whose faith in the locality has never faltered. Recently he succeeded in interesting men of means in Visalia, California, and they equipped a party to renew the search. A member of the expedition arrived here a few days ago, and said that he had been with Hardin in the Blackrock country, but owing to a disagreement with the leader had started to prospecting on his own account. He said that Hardin and others are now in the mountains west from Bartlett creek hunting for the lost lead and that he was going back to resume his search, and left here with that intention. From what we have heard of the Hardin lead we fear it is as mythical as the Cocos Island treasure and that searching for it is labor in vain. The Black Rock country was thoroughly explored at the time of the Isenberg excitement and the chemists attached to the Government geological expedition, reported through J. D. Hague, Professor of Mineralogy in Yale College, that analysis of the so-called Blackrock ore, disclosed no trace of any kind of metal, and no one, except Isenberg and the amalgamator at Dall's mill were able to extract silver from the volcanic matter of the Blackrock mines.
-The Silver State, August 26, 1875
Every once in a while, a bored newspaper will again run the story. An excerpt:
A load of the ore brought very poor returns, however, when it was milled in Unionville. Since the assays appeared so rich, a load of the same ore was taken to the Dall Mill near Washoe City. Here Hiskey, the foreman, a good judge of ore, declared the rock to be "worthless"; but it was run anyway and proved astonishingly rich! This brought about the prompt establishment of Hardin City with a mill near the site of the mine itself. Men flocked to the area by the thousand, and excitement was intense. But again, when the ore was milled at Hardin City, it proved worthless! Some experts thought it was the water at Hardin City, and so other wagon loads of the same ore were milled at various places, including the Dall Mill, and again all of the results were fantastically rich! But a repeated run back at Hardin City proved worthless. Then a new assayer was hired at Hardin City, and he believed the rock to be worthless. The controversy went on ... one load of ore giving a rich yield, the next proving worthless. Finally the mill at Hardin City was shut down. People began to move away, and the "city" dropped to a handful. Eventually they left, and the buildings fell apart until only a few adobe ruins remained of a once active and busy mining camp. Old mill reports still indicate that some of this mysterious ore was extremely rich. Others show it to be worthless rock. For years the argument raged. Mill foremen, assayers, and engineers were suspected, questioned, and investigated but without a single clue or result being found. It is said the man who can solve the old Hardin City mystery (and many have tried) will have his fortune made many times over.
In the Nevada Historical Society article Lost Hardin Silver: Enigma of the Black Rock Desert, author Douglas MacDonald says:
A small camp began to grow up at Hardin's Spring and naturally took the name Hardin City, although Hardin came there only once in the summer of 1866. Probably he stayed only long enough to verify that it was not his silver that had been found, and no further mention is known of his ever returning again. Such varied results had been realized on the ore that the men of Hardin City decided to hire their own assayer to work right at the mines. Their choice was a man named Isenbeck, and he soon managed to get good
returns from samples of all the claims in the area. So good, in fact, that some of the local people began to say he could get silver out of a piece of grindstone. Finally in April the first crude mill was erected at Hardin City. It consisted simply of a Spanish style arrastra for crushing ore, and small hand methods for working the concentrates. Only a very small amount of ore could be worked in this way though, and the early results were quite poor. This process was soon abandoned and the miners continued sending their ore to Dall's mill for reduction. Through the summer and fall of the year the camp grew into a real town. The Eastern Slope called Hardin City "a city of fifteen houses and 15,000 rats." All that was lacking was a local mill so the miners could escape transporting their ore to the far-removed mills. The Evans brothers of Long Valley, California, realized this lack of a mill and began thinking of building their own at Hardin City. Before they sank any money into such a project though, they decided to test the local ore themselves. They took a wagonload of ore from the Snow Storm, Black Wax, and other mines to Dall's mill where a portion of the load supposedly assayed out at $1,000 a ton. However, two Virginia City and Gold Hill assayers worked on the same ore and got no returns at all. At any rate, the glory was gone from the Black Rock mines and by the summer of 1868 Hardin City was a ghost town. Within two years the mills had been dismantled and moved to other locales, but the story of Hardin's silver ledge lived on.
-Lost Hardin Silver: Enigma of the Black Rock Desert
Supposedly the crumbling remains of up to three mills. It's in the Black Rock Desert. Go prepared if you're goin'.