'A' Mine names

We’ve had a mild winter here… especially compared to last year when blizzards started before Thanksgiving and seemed like they didn’t stop until May when it modified to rain!
Our temps hover in the teens today, but our low of -2
degrees F could easily be the high temp for the day this time of year!

I used some excerpts from an old document about Black Hills mine names a few weeks ago.

Some of these names are well known… there were a few that we hadn’t heard or we found a cross reference that helped us solve a few of the mysteries we encounter.

Here’s a sample of names and their origin:
*Addie Mine (Pennington Co., gold) was discovered in the 1890s by John Remington, who later established a hardware store in Hermosa. He named the mine for his daughter, Addie, the only girl in a family of six.
*Adelphi Mine (Lawrence Co., gold and silver) was located July 7, 1881, by Charles Miller and A. Danielson. The origin of the name is believed to be that of a society of which both partners were members.
*African Mine (see Grant Mine).
*Ajax Mine (Lawrence Co., gold) derived its name directly from Greek mythology.
*Alpha Mine (Lawrence Co., gold) was located May 12, 1876 by James Wolsay, a Californian, W.E. Jones and M.V. Roland. The Alpha was the first quartz mine discovered in Lawrence County and consequently was given the name of the first letter in the Greek alphabet.
*Apex Mine (Lawrence Co., gold) was located in 1878 by High and Thomas McGovern and was named because it lies on a ridge near the head of Nevada Gulch.
We’ve visited the name *Aurora Mine before, scene of the murder of Cephas Tuttle. At the time the mine was discovered, there was a brilliant display of the northern lights, or aurora borealis.

We like unique names and often incorporate them into claim names… the Backyardiggan was a fun one when the grandkids watched the same-named show about dinosaur and gold hunting in the Black Hills. Several claims of ours are named as private jokes (I’m guessing they’ll go down in history as no origin known for the name). There’s gonna be a few people who know that the Bronco and Bronco II are named in reference to a friend who preferred to buy a Bronco over staking a claim… and then there’s the Section 8 (that’s a story worthy of a campfire and a beer at the end of a long day of sluicing!).

I’ll share some more names another day… you can see I only made it through the As today!

So to wind it all up, when a normal winter would have had us shivering for weeks now, we’ve been enjoying more days in the 40s than around 0. We look at January and February as the months for coldest temps, so being more than ½ way through January and the short month of Feburary ahead of us, it looks as if we’ll make it through another winter!