White Pine County is set amid wild open spaces and some of the tallest mountains in Nevada. Yet despite its remoteness, the county has always had a central role in the world. In 2019, the county celebrates its 150th anniversary as an important cog in the delivery of minerals, food and recreation for people around the globe. The official anniversary is March 2, the day the state legislature established this chunk of eastern Nevada as its own county in 1869. 

“The Great Basin is a hard place to live,” says Sean Pitts, director of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Ely. “But 150 years of White Pine County is a testament to tenacity and to hard work and effort and sacrifice. If you’re wiling to put that in, then White Pine County becomes this extraordinary place to live. You can make a living here, and you can support a family here, and you can have a great life here.”

White Pine County first got on the map, quite literally, thanks to the efforts of Jedediah Smith, the famous western explorer. He’s likely the first European to lay eyes on the region that became White Pine County, passing through his party of trappers from June 14-19, 1827. It was an arduous trip, but a generous group of Indians showed him where to find spring water and native plants to eat, likely saving his life. In 1859, the U.S. Army established a small fort at Schellbourne, which had been a Shoshone Indian village about 35 miles north of present-day Ely. Its main purpose was to protect emigrants headed to the mining boom in Virginia City. The location became a Pony Express stop in 1860. Then telegraph lines — the new-fangled technology that killed the Pony Express — were routed through the same site.

But White Pine County soon had its own mining boom, one that would overshadow even Virginia City. It happened at the aptly named Treasure Hill, a mountain about 30 miles west of Ely. Pitts said an Indian known as Napias Jim took A.J. Leathers and six other companions to the mountain in 1867 to see a shiny vein of ore poking right out of the ground. It turned out to be the single richest silver discovery ever in North America, Pitts said: A vein of silver three-fourths of a mile long and one-third of a mile wide, mostly exposed on the surface of the mountain.  

Thus began what became known as the “Rush to White Pine.” Within two years, 40,000 people were living in the Treasure Hill area, mostly in Hamilton City, which became Nevada’s second-largest city at that time, after Virginia City. Other nearby towns included Treasure City, Shermantown, Seligman, Babylon, Belmont and Eberhardt. All are ghost towns now. On March 2, 1869, the state legislature established White Pine County, naming Hamilton City as the county seat. However, the silver ore soon began to play out, and pressure grew to move the county seat to Ely, which was more centrally located and where copper was beginning to show promise as the next big boom. That move finally happened in 1887.  In the meantime, many of those who grew weary of mining’s ups and downs took to raising livestock. The county’s expansive valleys proved to be excellent grazing land, and abundant groundwater was available to grow crops like alfalfa.  

Yet copper proved to be the mineral that keeps on giving. It has sustained the county for more than 120 years — with Ely at its hub — though not without some ups and downs. The primary copper producing region is known as the Robinson Mining District — named after Thomas Robinson, who discovered gold, silver and copper there in 1868. It lies alongside the town of Ruth, just outside of Ely. 

The Robinson open-pit copper mine has closed and reopened three times since 1970. Today the mine is owned by KGHM International, a company based in Poland, and remains the county’s largest employer. It has long been one of the most productive copper mines in the nation, providing America with a crucial raw material to fight two world wars and grow the world’s greatest economy. The need to transport all that copper led to development of the Nevada Northern Railway, now on the National Historic Register and Ely’s biggest tourist attraction. 

Bill Wilson worked in White Pine mining for nearly 40 years, starting at the Robinson mine in 1970. As important as mining has been, he said, tourism is becoming a vital part of the county’s economy. In addition to the train, the county is also home to Great Basin National Park — famous for its dark skies and one of the nation’s most uncrowded parks — in addition to 14 designated wilderness areas and a variety of unique outdoor experiences. As the rest of the West becomes increasingly crowded, visitors seem to be drawn more and more to the vast open spaces of White Pine County, where solitude and quiet can still be found in abundance. 

“I think as mining grows, diminishes — whatever their ups and downs are — there’s a lot more emphasis on tourism and recreation,” said Wilson, now retired and a board member of the White Pine Public Museum for more than 20 years. “A lot more of the young, mobile, trim and fit bike riders, runners and hikers are coming to Ely. Our dark skies are some of the best in the country. It’s a nice place. People are coming from thousands of miles to take a look.”