Types of Mining: Placer Mining and Hard-Rock Mining

The Early Years: Placer Mining

As miners started working in Colorado, they began establishing towns and learning more about how to mine in Colorado. In the beginning years of mining in Colorado, most miners were mainly working in placer mining. Placer mining is mining on the surface, searching for minerals that have already eroded into streams. Prospectors using gold pans separating minerals were placer miners. That means that the terms placer mining and prospecting are used to talk about the earlier years of mining. At this stage it was less likely that people would create established towns because people were constantly on the move searching for their fortune!

The Later Years: Hard-Rock Mining

As time passed, miners realized they could not rely on placer deposits so they started to do hard-rock mining, which means to extract ore from its original source, or lode. This required more complex technology to perform and also led to the creation of mining companies rather than individual prospectors.

Hard-rock mining required going deep inside mountains, blasting with dynamite, transporting the ore, and eventually smelting the ore in order to separate the minerals. Since this was a much more involved process, mining towns would become much more established and populated. In the early years of mining after the initial rush in 1859, most mines revolved around gold, but by the late 1870s miners learned of the prevalence of silver in Colorado’s mountains, shifting the industry.

Turn and tell a partner - what are the similarities and differences between placer mining and hard-rock mining?