Anthony Mill Ruins

In the Argus Range, there is a site known as the Anthony Mill Ruins. Marion T. Arnote of Johannesburg and the late John Cuddeback relocated this old silver mine in 1968. Both Arnote and area residents have tried in vain to uncover any concrete information on this mine and mill. Dr. O. N. Cole, a freelance historian who lives in Trona, talked with the late Ed Teagle, who recalled coming to Trona in 1900 and finding the site in ruins then. However, Arnote corresponded with a woman who lived in Millspaugh about 1906, and she indicated the site was inhabited at that time.

There is an almost certainly spurious story circulating that this mine was worked by Mormons. One Sunday while there were having services, 300 were killed by Indians at the large flat south of the mill ruins. Their bodies are supposed to be buried east of the massacre site. If there is a shred of fact to this story, this massacre probably would have taken place about 1866 or 1867, when the Slate Range Mill was burned.

Others have surmised, after looking at the extensive labor that went into the dressing of stones for the mill, the hillside honeycombed with mine workings, and the numerous stone dwellings that cover the area, that Chinese labor may have been responsible. The stone work here reportedly matches that at the “Chinese wall” on the Trona Grade. Since this is a silver mine it may have been worked at the same time as Lookout or Panamint. The iron mine less than a mile south of here was a source of flux for the smelters at Lookout, and undoubtedly many men were in the area at the time.

At Anthony Mill Ruins there are remains of an arrastre probably used during this century, but the square nails at the building sites attest to a much older occupation. The roof on one of the dwellings was built by Arnote. A pipeline, whose trace is clearly visible, connected the mill with Water Canyon. Some residents can remember when it was still there. 34