The Hackberry Mine was found on 12 October 1874 by four men whose horses had been taken by raiders, while they were hunting for water on the northeast slope of the Peacock Mountains. Samuel Crozier, William Ridenour, J. D. Putman and J. A. Kile came across a silver ledge instead, filed the first claims, and named the place for a hackberry tree growing by a nearby water source. That tree is where the town of Hackberry got its name. The first ore was dug by hand with windlasses from no more than 50 feet down and packed out on burros to an amalgamation mill. In 1876 a group of San Francisco investors bought the mine, and it soon turned out 222 bars of silver valued at $222,705. A camp of about 400 people grew up roughly a mile and a half east of the shaft, with a general store and, by local account, its own hanging.
The mine never ran smoothly for long. Mismanagement shut it down, the Hackberry Mining and Milling Company worked it from 1881 to 1884, and litigation kept it from full development; estimates of what it produced between 1875 and 1917 range from $750,000 to $3 million in silver and gold. It reopened in 1914, when oil flotation made a large body of low-grade ore pay, and a 200-ton mill was built beside the shaft collar before flooding closed it in 1921.
When the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad came through in 1883, the town moved several miles to meet the tracks, and later became a cattle shipping point. That railroad town is the Hackberry on Route 66. The main shaft at the mine is 950 feet deep, and the property is privately owned.
Getting there
35.3503, -113.7666
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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