Monte Cristo’s Gold: A Case Study of a Hard Rock Gold Mining Town in Washington’s Cascade Range at the Turn of the 20th Century.

Summary

In the 1890s, the town of Monte Cristo, located deep within Washington’s Cascade Range, promised to be one of the state’s most profitable mining towns. Gold was first discovered in Glacier Basin in 1889, and Monte Cristo, assisted by a railroad that ran directly from the town to the city of Everett, developed nearby to support local mining endeavors. Unfortunately, the mines were not as profitable as originally hoped. By 1905, mining had mostly seized, and the town was eventually abandoned. In 2015, ASM Affiliates, Inc. conducted archaeological monitoring during a CERCLA project targeting the Monte Cristo Mining Historic District. During the project, 385 artifacts largely dating to the mining period were collected from 6 individual sites. This paper documents the results of research into the artifacts collected from the site which reveals details about the industrial and private activities undertaken within this important but short-lived Washington gold mining town at the turn of the 20th century. It also details the international mining networks of the late 1800s which prompted the spread of new mining technologies into the American West and provided the impetus for hard-rock mining in Washington’s Cascade Range.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16654