Yankee Girl Mine - Colorado - Blue Oval Trucks

Yankee Girl Mine – Red Mountain #3 – Colorado

On the fourth day of the roadtrip (July 13th), we explored the Yankee Girl Mine just north of Silverton Colorado. The mine can be seen from a parking area at the Idarado Mining Town on US 550, but you can take a dirt road (CR 31) off of US 550 to see it up close.

CR 31 intersects with US 550 in (2) places. Heading south on US 550, the first spot is in a sharp right turn before you get to the Idarado Mining Town:

Google maps doesn’t show CR 31 intersecting with US 550 south of the Idarado Mining Town, but it does. You can see it on the satellite view:

You can see where CR 31 seems to just end, but you can also make out a road coming off of US 550, that follows the Red Mountain Creek (I added ‘CR 31′ to help identify it). When I visited the Yankee Girl Mine, I came in from this end of CR 31. The road wasn’t that obvious, but it had a placard with a ’31’ on it.

If you want to go to the Yankee Girl Mine, it’s easier to get to from the north.

The road actually got a bit narrower than it looks in the photo, and followed along a cliff.

I can see Yankee Girl out ahead of me (note that I’m higher than it is).

So far so good, I guess I’m making a right turn up here…..

Ok, so maybe I’m off the right path a little bit. You can see where CR 31 is, but I’m on a road that I marked with blue dots. No big deal, but after passing that building, the road switches back and there’s a good 18″ – 24″ ledge to climb over. Again, not a big deal, but I’m in a 4-door Ford F-350, so I had to back up to re-position myself for the turn, without dropping off the edge. My F-350 is an FX4 model with front and rear Traction Loc differentials, so it climbed up and over the ledge without a problem. Unfortunately, I was to distracted with this obstacle, and didn’t think to take a photo first.

From this point, I just continued on to a switchback that took me back to CR 31, and the Yankee Girl Mine.

According to the United States Geological Survey Volumes 180-184:

Yankee Girl Mine – The Yankee Girl ore body was discovered in the autumn of 1881 by John Robinson. In 1882 it was being opened by two shafts, each about 50 feet deep. At that depth the ore is said to have been about 9 feet wide, consisting chiefly of galena with bunches of chalcopyrite, and carrying as much as 80 ounces of silver and 65 percent of lead. The ore body was rapidly opened up and proved large and rich.

In 1883, with a thousand feet of drifts and shafts, about 3,000 tons of ore were extracted, with an average value of nearly $150 per ton. The product for this year is given in the Mint report as $400,000, and the ore is said to have carried a high percentage of lead.

In 1884, according to the same authority, the mine was producing about 40 tons a day, which, at $150 per ton, would be something over $2,000,000 for the year. This, however, is obviously an excessive estimate.

In 1887 the output is not known, but was probably much less than $200,000.

In 1890 it is credited with $1,352,994, the silver, as usual, being given at its coinage value and no return being made for copper or lead.

In 1891 the product is given as $601,465 in gold and silver, and in 1892 it had fallen to $95,445. Of this amount $5,200 was in gold, $48,333 in silver (coinage value), $3,632 in lead, and $38,280 in copper. Thus these fragmentary records show that in the course of ten years’ working the ore changed, within a vertical distance of 1,000 feet, from one carrying chiefly galena to one rich in copper.

This has probably been the most widely known and most productive mine in the Red Mountain district, although closely rivaled by the Guston. But it was an expensive mine to operate on account of the irregular form of its large ore bodies, the abundance and corrosive activity of its waters, and the necessity of hoisting and pumping through deep shafts. These adverse conditions, in conjunction with a falling off in the value of the ore and the decline in silver, finally caused the mine to shut down about 1896.

Standing in front of the Yankee Girl Mine, this is the view looking back towards the pull off along US 550, where I first spotted the Yankee Girl Mine. The yellow arrow indicates where I was parked: