Mining Ghost Towns

Man stands in a stream aiming a hose of water at a river bank and blasting the rock and dirt away.
A gold miner blasts rock and dirt with a powerful stream of water along a river bed near Galice, Oregon in 1910. Hydraulic mining was among the most environmentally destructive forms of mining during the 1800s and early 1900s. (Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society) Enlarge Image
Mining, by definition an extraction industry, created numerous ghost towns as the boom-bust economic cycle moved through southern and eastern Oregon in the 1800s and early 1900s. Several notable mining ghost towns are described and pictured in the links below.