The Tintic Standard Reduction Mill Landscape
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
Jimmy [Miklavcic] and I were attending the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters annual excursion. The outing was a journey to Delta, Utah to view the Topaz Internment Camp site. Later, the excursion headed west to Baker, Nevada to view the Lehman Caves in the Great Basin National Park...
The Tintic Standard Reduction Mill Landscape
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
When we were driving west on the way to Delta, we did not notice this facility, but on the way back to Salt Lake City, we were awestruck by this incredible, massive, structure cut into the mountain, that looked like Anasazi ruins. We had to stop!
Warm Springs Mountain - Tintic Mill
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
Luckily there was another person photographing the site and he told us that it was the
Genola Abandoned Gold Processing Facility. I was struck by how the remains of this massive place blended, and yet, simultaneously felt like a pockmark in the hillside. It is an eerie place and I was overwhelmed with the scale of this facility.
Warm Springs Mountain - Tintic Mill
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
The functioning processing plant must have been something in its hey-day. It's a facility built to strip arsenic, mercury and other unwanted metals from gold and other precious metals. Don't swim in the ponds below the site that is where they dumped the unwanted metals and wastes.
Tintic Mill in Warm Springs Mountain
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
Paying attention to the
No Trespassing sign we did not venture up further, but remained on the side of the road just off Highway 6. I took photographs of the dramatic landscape using a wide-angle lens and shot as close a view of the facility as I could get with a Pentax 300mm telephoto zoom lens.
Tintic Mill in Warm Springs Mountain
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
Apparently, it is quite dangerous to go up into the deteriorating site that is also contaminated with some nasty chemicals. This does not seem to deter the many graffiti artists who have left their marks over the years on the structure’s skeleton.
Tintic Standard Reduction Mill Facility
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
The Tintic Standard Reduction Mill—also known as the Tintic Mill or Harold Mill—built in 1920, and only operating from 1921 to 1925, is an abandoned refinery located on the west slope of Warm Springs Mountain near Goshen, Utah, in the United States. Metals processed at the mill included copper, gold, silver, and lead, all of which were received from another mill near Eureka, Utah. The reducing process used was an acid-brine chloridizing and leaching process, which became outdated, leading to the abandonment of the site in 1925. At the mill's highest productivity it processed 200 tons of ore yearly from the Tintic Mining District.
Wikipedia
Drain Boxes for Lead Precipitate - Tintic Mill
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
What remains of the mill are foundations for water tanks, crushers, roasters, iron boxes, leaching tanks, and drain boxes. The site dominates the surrounding landscape with its size and unique colors and shapes.
Wikipedia
Vats - Tintic Standard Reduction Mill
|
by ELIZABETH MIKLAVCIC
|
|
It was designed and built by W. C. Madge. It is significant as the only American mill using the Augustin process during the early 1920s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It has been speculated that the mill may be the contributor of heavy metal pollution in the Goshen Warm Springs, which lie below it.
Wikipedia