The year is 1876. A doctor with a good eye for minerals spots an interesting ore specimen on the table at the home of a sick prospector. So began Pyramid City. Two miles above Pyramid City was a smaller camp, called either Jonesville or Upper Pyramid. The cache is located on a hill next to this settlement.

The life of a prospector was full of difficulty and uncertainty. A single rock might be the only thing keeping food on his table, and finding another one like it his only hope for next meal. Every so often a prospector would make a strike that would make them a decent living, or even make them very rich. But don’t confuse a prospector with a miner. Many times a prospector would simply sell his claim and move on.

A prospector would comb the hills and valleys looking for indications that there might be valuable ore at or below the surface. They might dig for some time, find a piece of promising ore, and move on to the next claim. They would catalog their claims and file them. If the ore that they mined turned out to have promising yield, they had some choices. They could develop it into a mine by getting some local investors involved. They could simply sell it to an investor for a price that they would derive from how many feet they claimed the vein ran, and how much each foot was worth.

This was all very hard work. Take for example Pyramid City. When you get to the location, look around. You won’t see much, and in the mid 1880’s when this area was being actively mined, there was scarcely more. The Jones & Kincaid mine produced between 1877 and 1885. The area had a store and hotel, and various stone homes. Few signs remain. These pictures were taken in 2011, and I’ve heard from @NVTami that the area has since burned, which makes me very glad I took the time to take even the lousy pictures. They are in no particular order, below. One of the roads goes up a canyon to a stone house, which I’ve also included. If you’re into Geocaching, check out A Prospector’s View, a cache that I placed there in 2011, but is now owned by another cacher, and from which I took most of this text.