The Gold Road Mine was the big strike of the Black Mountains a decade before Oatman's boom. In 1900 a prospector named José Jerez found rich gold float several miles northeast of the future town of Oatman and took samples to Henry Lovin, the Kingman storekeeper who had often grubstaked him. Jerez traced the float to an exposed vein and staked two claims, naming them Gold Road and Line Road after nearby wagon roads. The claim was sold in 1901 for $50,000; investors formed the Gold Road Mining and Exploration Company and began mining in 1902, and by 1911 a small mill had treated about 290,000 tons of ore worth $3,667,000. That year the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company bought the whole property for a reported $1,600,000.
The mine was idle by 1921, reopened briefly in 1922 and 1923, and came back after the price of gold was raised to $35 an ounce in 1934. By 1936 it was the district's largest shipper, the camp was renamed Goldroad at about that time, and a new 300-ton mill started on 15 February 1937. In October 1942 War Production Board Order L-208 closed every domestic precious metal mine to free miners for copper, lead and zinc, and the company dismantled the Goldroad headframe, mill and all its employee housing and trucked them to a new mine at Vanadium, New Mexico. The early-1950s realignment of Route 66 through Yucca later took the highway traffic away.
Addwest Minerals reopened the mine in the 1990s, poured its first gold in January 1995, recovered 92,500 ounces and closed in 1998. It has been revived several times since, most recently in late 2025, when Gold Road International restarted the mill and underground mining.
Getting there
35.0447, -114.3777
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