- Camp Bird Mine
The Camp Bird Mine is a famous and highly-productive old
gold mine located between Ouray andTelluride, Colorado . The mine is within the Sneffels-Red Mountain-Telluride mining district in the San Juan Mountains.It was discovered by Thomas F. Walsh in 1896, and is (or was) owned by the Federal Resources Corp. The mine produced about 1.5 million
troy ounces of gold, and 4 million troy ounces of silver, from 1896 to 1990 [ [http://www.mindat.org/loc-8702.html Camp Bird Mine, Ouray, Sneffels District (Mount Sneffels District), Ouray Co., Colorado, USA ] ] . Walsh sold the property for $US 5.2 million in 1902. Walsh's daughter,Evalyn Walsh McLean , later purchased theHope Diamond . Walsh died in 1909.Camp Bird is named after the "Camp Birds", probably Rocky Mountain jays [ Nesting of the Rocky Mountain JayW. C. Bradbury: The Condor, Vol. 20, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1918), pp. 197-208 doi:10.2307/1362801 ] , that ate many a miner's lunch [ [http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/co/campbird.html Camp Bird - Colorado Ghost Town ] ] . Telluride native
David Lavender related his experiences working at the Camp Bird Mine in the 1930s in his classic memoir "One Man's West."C.W. McCall sang "Way out in Colorado, in the Camp Bird Mine, down deep in the darkness, on level nine..." [ [http://www.cw-mccall.com/works/real/mine.shtml "Camp Bird Mine"] ]The Camp Bird Mine filed for a permit to resume mining in late 2007, [http://www.ouraynews.com/Articles-i-2007-10-12-164477.112113_Camp_Bird_filesmining_permit.html] but remains inactive as of August 2008. [http://www.ouraynews.com/Articles-i-2008-08-08-182960.112113_Tom_Walsh_Road_traffic_oneway_Both_ways.html]
ee also
*
Yankee Boy Basin
= Notes =ources and external links
* [http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/co/campbird.html Camp Bird ghost town] , includes photo gallery
* [http://coloradominerals.com/Camp+Bird+mine History of the mine]
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