Mercur, Utah

Mercur is a historical hard rock mining ghost town in Tooele County, Utah, USA. In 1891, It became site of the first successful use of the cyanide process of gold extraction in the United States, the dominant metallurgy today. Its elevation from sea level is approximately 2,042 m. The nearby Mercur Gold Mine was re-opened by Barrick Gold in 1985, and is undergoing reclamation and restoration.

The town first came into being in 1870 as Lewiston (not to be confused with the present-day city of Lewiston in Cache County), when gold was discovered at the head of the Lewiston Canyon, six miles west of present-day Cedar Fort. A small gold rush began, peaking about 1873; the population reached as high as 2000. During the mid-1870s, silver boomed, and silver mines were opened and quartz mills to process the ore were built. A million dollars worth of silver bullion was shipped down the valley, but the ore quickly gave out, and Lewiston became a ghost town by 1880.

In 1879, a Bavarian miner named Arie Pinedo had discovered a deposit of cinnabar in the area. The ore contained gold as well as mercury, but contemporary processes were unable to extract it. Similar discoveries were made throughout the 1880s.

In 1890, a group of Nebraska "farmers" bought the Mercur claim through an over optimistic promoter. They opened the mine and put in a basic amalgamation mill, a grand flop. Mercur ores were not workable with the ancient process. One of the Nebraska partners, Gilbert S. "Gill" Peyton, a former druggist, heard of the new but unperfected cyanide process and gave it a try. Fearful of losing his and his relatives investment, he solved the difficulties of the new method on the ores, and by December 1891 proved that the cyanide process worked – the first such successful operation in the United States. (The cyanide process has come to dominate western gold metallurgy.) As a result, Peyton and his brother-in-law, partner Hal Brown became rich, as did others of the Nebraska group, including company president John Dern, a Fremont, Nebraska grain dealer soon-to-be Salt Lake City business leader. (Brown's niece married Dern's son George, who became a manager of Mercur Con, a successful mining engineer, and Utah governor, 1925-1933; he then served as Secretary of War under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1936).

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