The Nevada Traveler: Exploring fading Candelaria

Wandering the handful of ruins in the old mining town of Candelaria, it’s hard to believe the town once boasted some 1,500 residents and its mines produced more than $1 million per year in ore.

Only a few stone walls and arches, piles of wooden and metal debris and a cemetery mark the spot of what was once one of the most successful mining communities in Esmeralda County (the county was later split into two counties, Esmeralda and Mineral, with Candelaria becoming part of Mineral County).

Candelaria traces its beginnings to 1864, when Mexican prospectors discovered silver in the hills about 12 miles northwest of the Columbia salt marshes (some 120 miles south of Fallon). They established a mine they named Candelaria in honor of Candle Mass, a Roman Catholic holiday.

While the ore was promising, the camp really did not begin to grow until the late 1870s, when German and Slovenian miners arrived and staked the Northern Belle Mine, which proved extremely profitable. Within a few years, large stamp mills were erected at nearby Belleville (eight miles northwest) and the boom was under way.

In 1876, a visitor to Candelaria could find a post office, hotels, restaurants, stables and a budding business district. Water, however, was virtually nonexistent.

Residents paid as much as $1 per gallon — it cost $2 to bathe — for water that had to be transported from a spring nine miles away. In fact, some historians claim that whiskey and other alcoholic beverages were much cheaper to drink than water.

The lack of water is said to have been particularly difficult because it meant the stamp mills operated without water, generating clouds of silica-laden dust that caused the miners to suffer and die from lung-related diseases. A water pipeline was built in 1882 from nearby Trail Canyon and the price of the precious commodity dropped to five cents per gallon.

The town also reportedly had three doctors, two lawyers, a school, bank, telegraph office, two breweries, a newspaper and two dozen saloons — but, despite its Christian name, no churches (in fact, the town never had a church).

Perhaps the most important event for the town happened in 1882 with completion of a spur of the Carson & Colorado Railroad. The route connected Candelaria to shipping points at Mina and Keeler, a town near Owens Lake, Calif.

A fire destroyed a substantial part of the budding metropolis in 1883. The next year, a strike at the mines affected the area's output. That was followed by a gradual decline of the mines’ output.

By 1890, the town was in a serious slump that was only exacerbated by the national financial panic of 1893, which cut off new sources of capital and caused many of the mines to close.

The district revived briefly just after the turn of the 20th century with new mining discoveries but that flurry of activity was short-lived.

The Carson & Colorado Railroad abandoned the area in 1932 (after having been consolidated with other railroad lines in 1905 to become the Nevada & California Railway). It had provided only intermittent service during the previous three decades.

Open pit gold mining operations were initiated in the 1970s, which obliterated much of the area around the historic mining district, including the site of an adjacent mining town called Metallic City. Today, large chainlink fences surround the open pit mine that border the old town.

As a result, the desert is slowly reclaiming Candelaria, which hasn’t had a resident in more than 90 years. Photos of Candelaria taken 25 years ago show many of the same buildings, but in much better shape and in greater number.

The best remains include the former bank building, which, according to records, later served as a saloon and general store as well as a fairly intact stone building across the street. All around are a handful of stone foundations, wooden walls, fences and collapsed ruins.

The two stone structures, in fact, are the most substantial survivors of a main street that once stretched for a half-mile or so through this small, dry valley surrounded by rough, black lava-rock hills. A few miles north of the townsite is the cemetery, which is definitely worth checking out.

Candelaria sits 14 miles south of Mina, off U.S. 95 via a marked, paved road (which leads to the modern mining operation). Mina is located about 35 miles south of Hawthorne.

For information about Candelaria, check out Stanley Paher’s “Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps” and Shawn Hall’s “Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Southern Nevada,” which has a chapter on Candelaria. Both are available from online booksellers.

You can also find a nice selection of contemporary photos at https://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nv/candelaria.html.

Rich Moreno writes about the places and people that make Nevada special.