31 Best Sights in USA

Five blocks east of the center of Julian you can take an hour-long tour of an authentic family-owned gold mine from 1870, and even pan for gold. Displays along the route include authentic tools and machinery, gold extraction process, and gold quartz–bearing veins. A small rock shop and gold-mining museum are also on the premises.

During the gold rush days, the Argo Gold Mine and Mill processed more than $100 million worth of the precious metal. To transport the ore from mines in Central City, workers dug through solid rock to construct a tunnel to Central City, 4½ miles away. When completed in 1910, the Argo Tunnel was the longest in the world. During a tour of the mine and mill, guides explain how this monumental engineering feat was accomplished. Admission includes a small museum and a gold-panning lesson.

Bring your own sledgehammers and pry bars or rent them from the gift shop, stake a "claim," and begin your search for quarry. No matter where you prospect, you're not likely to be disappointed. Many open pits are an easy walk to the right or left of the visitor center, where you can see beads, stones, an extensive book section, and other rock-related items. You might venture up the steep hillside in hope of finding a pocket containing hundreds of "diamonds"—really quartz crystals with diamondlike facets. The views of the wooded valley and the Mohawk River are a find in themselves.

At 585 feet tall, "the Stack" at Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park is a solid reminder of the important role the Anaconda Copper Company played in the area's development. Built in 1919, the stack, one of the tallest freestanding brick structures in the world, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Smelting operations ceased in 1980. There's a viewing and interpretive area with displays and historical information, but you cannot access the smokestack itself.

This mining operations center elucidates the importance of mining to everyday life. Indoor exhibits include a walk-through model of an ore crusher, video stations that explain refining processes, and a film about how minerals are actually extracted. Outside, you can see some of the actual equipment, including a few gargantuan trucks used for hauling the stuff. The big draw, though, is the yawning open pit of the Mission Mine, some 2 miles long and 1¾ miles wide because so much earth has to be torn up to extract the 1% that is copper. It's impressive, but doesn't bolster the case the center tries to make about how environmentally conscious mining has become. Tours of the pit take a little over an hour; call ahead for the tour schedule, which is limited during summer months, due to the heat.

On this hour-long tour, visitors trek 1,500 feet into one of the region's great silver mines. Tour guides are actual miners and they explain various mining techniques and point out remaining silver veins and other mineral deposits. Tours depart every hour, and light jackets are wise year-round, as it's chilly in the mine. Gold-panning lessons in the adjacent stream are included in the tour price. On summer weekends, come early for a tasty, inexpensive breakfast.

Thanks to old mining waste, Butte has the dubious distinction as the location of the largest toxic-waste site in the country. Some underground copper mines were dug up in the 1950s, creating the site that stretches 1½ by 1 mile, reaches 1,600 feet deep, and is filled with toxic water some 800 feet deep. A viewing platform allows you to look into the now-abandoned mammoth pit where more than 20 billion pounds of copper, 704 million ounces of silver, and 3 million ounces of gold were extracted from the Butte mining district.

Don a hard hat and take a guided tour through an underground gold mine, get some free gold ore samples, explore the mining museum, and do a little gold panning yourself at this authentic-looking facility built into a hillside along Battle Creek.

You're guaranteed to find gold on a panning experience here. If you take the short, guided, underground mine tour, you'll also get a souvenir stock certificate. Tours begin every 30 minutes from the small surface buildings perched on the hillside.

Ten well-preserved stone kilns, each 25 feet high and 30 feet wide, stand as if on parade. The kilns, built by laborers for the Modock Consolidated Mining Company in 1877, were used to burn wood from pinyon pines to turn it into charcoal. The charcoal was then transported to the Argus Range west of Panamint Valley—and later to the towns of Darwin and Lookout—where it was used to extract lead and silver from the ore mined there. Nearby is the trailhead for the difficult, 8.4-mile hike to Wildrose Peak.

Take a guided tour of a real mine, which ceased operations in 1904. With 5 miles of underground tunnels, Consolidated is said to be the largest gold mine east of the Mississippi. Enter the mine (which has been reconstructed for safety), pass through a breathtaking stone passage, and then begin a descent of 120 feet into the mine's geological wonders. Knowledgeable guides expound on historical mining techniques and give demonstrations of tools, such as the "widowmaker," a drill that kicks up mining dust and caused lung disease in many miners. After the tour, guests are invited to pan for gold, prospector style, from a long wooden sluice. Gemstone mining is also available for an additional fee.

For a lesson in mining history, take a tour led by Bisbee's retired copper miners, who are wont to embellish their spiel with tales from their mining days. The 60-minute tours (you can't enter the mine at any other time) go into the shaft via a small open train, like those the miners rode when the mine was active. Before you climb aboard, you're outfitted in miner's garb—a safety vest and a hard hat with a light that runs off a battery pack. You'll travel thousands of feet into the mine, up a grade of 30 feet (not down, as many visitors expect). The mine is less than ½ mile to the east of the Lavender Pit, across AZ 80 from downtown at the Brewery Gulch interchange. Reservations are suggested; close-toed shoes are required.

When gold was discovered here in 1887, the Country Boy Mine became one of the region's top producers---lead and zinc, which were vital for U.S. efforts in World War I and World War II, were big here, too. The gold mine tour takes visitors more than 1,000 feet deep into the mountain. Visitors can pet the donkeys that roam the area, pan for keepable gold, or go on a treasure hunt with a metal detector. The mine has a 55-foot ore-chute slide, historic buildings, and plenty of mining artifacts.

Guided tours of this mine, 12 miles south of Copper Harbor along Highway 41, take visitors (wearing hard hats) 110 feet belowground for a 45-minute exploration (warm clothing is recommended). It's an authentic mine dating back to 1847 and veins of copper are still visible in what was once a highly active mining operation. Self-guided tours are also available. Aboveground, railroad enthusiasts will enjoy indoor and outdoor antique train displays, while animal lovers can visit a pen housing goats and deer.

The mine, started in 1878, is one of the largest garnet mines in the world. Guided tours, which include a walk through an open-pit mine, leave from the Gore Mountain Mineral Shop; you follow the guide in your car to the actual mines, at the base of Gore Mountain.

Take a self-guided tour of this fully lighted mine shaft within a park owned by the City of Placerville. The worthwhile audio tour (included) makes clear what you're seeing. A shaded stream runs through the park, and there are picnic facilities.

Near the Rainy Lake Visitor Center is Little American Island, the focal point of a brief, turn-of-the-20th-century gold rush. There was gold here, but the granite and greenstone in which it was encased made digging it out too expensive. A few shafts and caverns, plus the odd bit of equipment, are all that remain, but the island and its surroundings nevertheless compose the Gold Mine Historic District. It is accessible only by water; tour boats can get you here.

Death Valley's mule teams hauled borax from here to the railroad town of Mojave, 165 miles away. They plied the route until 1889, when the railroad finally arrived in Zabriskie. Constructed in 1883, one of the oldest buildings in Death Valley houses the Borax Museum, 2 miles south of the borax works at the Ranch at the Oasis at Death Valley (between the restaurants and the post office). Originally a miners' bunkhouse, the building once stood in Twenty Mule Team Canyon. Now it displays mining machinery and historical exhibits. The adjacent structure is the original mule-team barn.

Try your luck at prospecting: hammer open the right rocks and you'll find double-terminated quartz crystals, aka Herkimer diamonds. Two open pits are easy to reach. The first is adjacent to the gift shop. Upstairs you can watch an explanatory video or stroll through multiple scientific displays, including exhibits about dinosaurs and fluorescent minerals. The mines are just south of Middleville.

Accessed via a dirt road, this fascinating relic of Death Valley's gold-mining past, built in 1907, reopened in November 2017 after nine years of repair work. Its most unique feature is the mile-long tramway, with the original cables still attached, that descends 1,000 vertical feet and once carried gold ore. From here, a network of trails leads to other old mines. A 1,500 foot climb 1.4 miles to the uppermost tramway terminal is rewarded by expansive valley views.

On weekends much of the year and some major holidays, docents conduct guided 90-minute surface tours of one of the gold-rush era's most prolific, and one of the world's deepest, mines. Exhibits inside the remaining buildings illustrate how gold flakes were melted for shipment to San Francisco and how "skips" were used to lower miners and materials into the mile-long shaft and carry ore to the surface.

About ¼ mile after AZ 80 intersects with AZ 92, you can pull off the highway into a gravel parking lot for a view of the Lavender Pit Mine, a huge hole left by the copper miners. Though the piles of "tailings," or waste, are lavender-hued, the pit's namesake is actually Harrison (Harry) Lavender, the engineer largely responsible for transforming Bisbee's rock into commercial copper ore. Arizona's largest pit mine yielded some 94 million tons of ore before mining activity came to a halt.

Hard-working men and women once coaxed cinnabar, or mercury ore, from the Mariscal Mine, located at the north end of Mariscal Mountain, in the southern reaches of the park. The mines and surrounding stone buildings were abandoned in the 1940s. If you visit, take care not to touch the timeworn stones, as they may contain poisonous mercury residue. You need a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle to drive the 20-mile road, which begins 5 miles west of Rio Grande Village; check with park rangers for current road conditions, and allow a half-day for this fascinating but remote adventure.

Northeast of Silverton, the Mayflower Mill (also known as the Shenandoah-Dives Mill) is a beautifully restored landmark with tours that explain how precious gold, silver, and other metals were extracted and processed.

You get an expansive view of Ajo's ugly gash of an open-pit mine, almost 2 miles wide, from the New Cornelia Open Pit Mine Lookout Point. Some of the abandoned equipment remains in the pit, and mining operations are diagrammed at the volunteer-run visitor center, where there's a 30-minute film about mining. The lookout point is always "open," but the visitor center's hours are sporadic. The mine is about a mile southwest of the plaza; take La Mina Road or Estrella Road to Indian Village Road.

At one time, nearly 50 coal towns sprung up along the New River Gorge, including Nuttallburg. This prosperous community was founded by John Nuttall who saw the lucrative potential of this coal-rich region. Long-abandoned mining structures remain today, including the headhouse, coal conveyor, coke ovens, coal tipple, and the mine entrance.

A mine train takes you 1,500 feet underground into the Old Hundred Gold Mine for a tour of one of the area's oldest mining facilities. Your miner-guide follows the vein and operates authentic equipment to show you how mining was done in the old days. Old Hundred operated for about a century, from the first strike in 1872 until the last haul in the early 1970s. Temperatures remain at a steady 47°F, so be sure to bring a sweater or a jacket. Guided tours leave every hour on the hour from 10 am to 3 pm (arrive 15 minutes early to secure your spot). Your ticket price also covers panning for gold, silver, copper, and gemstones in the sluice boxes outside the mine.

At the Phoenix Gold Mine a seasoned miner leads tours underground, where you can wield 19th-century excavating tools or pan for gold. Whatever riches you find are yours to keep.