09/29/2026
Nevada's Other Mining Boom, Tungsten at the Humboldt Mine
When we think about historic mining in Nevada, gold and silver usually get most of the attention. But this remarkable photograph from the Humboldt Mine near Mill City tells the story of another metal that became extremely important to Nevada mining: tungsten.
This photograph dates from the 1930s and shows part of the Humboldt operation in the Mill City Mining District of Pershing County. The large wooden structure in the center appears to be an ore-loading facility, with a string of small mine cars sitting on the industrial railroad below it. Look closely and you can follow the tracks curving through the mine complex, while the headframe rises prominently above the operation.
Those little railroad cars are one of my favorite details in the photograph. The mining operation actually maintained its own small industrial railroad system. Around 1927, two secondhand Plymouth DL-2 gasoline locomotives were reportedly acquired to move ore, equipment, and cars around the property. Rather than the big steam locomotives we normally associate with Nevada's railroads, these were compact industrial locomotives designed for exactly this kind of work.
I've also heard from people who remember this photograph that the two Plymouth locomotives were later used on a construction project over Donner Pass and that both survived into modern times. That's a fascinating possibility, but I haven't yet found enough documentation to confirm that part of their history. If anyone has photographs, builder numbers, or records tracing those locomotives after they left the Mill City operation, I'd certainly like to see them.
The history of tungsten mining here began during World War I. Tungsten was discovered in the Mill City district in 1917, and within a remarkably short period several companies were mining tungsten ore in the surrounding Eugene Mountains. One of those operations was the Humboldt Mine seen here. By 1918, mills had been constructed in the district to process the ore.
Then the war ended, and the market changed almost overnight. Tungsten prices collapsed following the Armistice, and much of the young mining district quickly went quiet. It was another example of something that has happened repeatedly throughout Nevada mining history: valuable ore can still be sitting in the ground, but if the economics disappear, so does the mine.
The tungsten certainly hadn't gone anywhere. Mining returned during the 1920s, and the Nevada-Massachusetts Company gradually consolidated the major properties in the district. It acquired the Pacific Tungsten and Mill City properties in 1925 and completed its purchase of the Humboldt properties in 1928, bringing the Humboldt Mine into a considerably larger mining operation.
The mineral they were primarily after was scheelite, a calcium tungstate mineral from which tungsten could be recovered. Tungsten doesn't have the glamour of gold or silver, but industrially it is an extraordinary metal. Its hardness and ability to retain strength at very high temperatures made it increasingly valuable for hardened steels, cutting tools, machinery, and other industrial and military applications.
That became especially important as international tensions increased during the 1930s and eventually led into World War II. Domestic sources of strategic metals became increasingly important to the United States, and the Nevada-Massachusetts operation developed into one of the country's significant tungsten producers.
There was an entire mining community associated with these workings as well. The company town of Tungsten developed near the mines and mill, eventually containing homes, offices, a school, post office, library, mercantile, boarding house, and other facilities needed to support the workers and their families. During World War II, hundreds of men were employed by the operation.
That's what makes this photograph particularly interesting to me. We're not looking at the ruins of an abandoned mine. We're looking at a working industrial operation.
Ore cars are lined up beneath the loading structure. Tracks weave through the property. The headframe stands over the shaft, while mine buildings, machinery, timber, and other equipment surround the workings. Somewhere around this operation, those little Plymouth locomotives would have been moving strings of cars back and forth.
And what we see above ground was only part of the story. The Humboldt workings were eventually connected underground with the neighboring Springer Mine, creating an extensive system beneath these hills. Like so many mining photographs, the relatively small collection of structures visible on the surface gives little indication of how much work was taking place underground.
The district's importance didn't end with the 1930s. Nevada became one of America's leading tungsten-producing states during the 1940s and 1950s, and the Mill City district remained an important part of that story. Mining under the Nevada-Massachusetts Company continued until 1958, with the property maintained for several years afterward.
Decades later, General Electric became involved with the property and invested heavily in developing an entirely new mine and processing operation. That modern operation briefly entered production in 1982, only to be hit by another collapse in tungsten prices.
More than sixty years after tungsten was first discovered here, essentially the same cycle had repeated itself: discovery, development, production, falling metal prices, and shutdown.
It's a pattern that runs throughout Nevada mining history.
Gold and silver may have created many of Nevada's most famous mining camps, but photographs like this are a great reminder that there were other minerals beneath these mountains that became every bit as important.
Sometimes the metal that mattered wasn't gold at all.
Humboldt Mine
Mill City Mining District, Pershing County, Nevada
Circa 1930s
Image Courtesy of the University of Nevada, Reno, Special Collections.
