The Argo Mill and the Great Drainage Tunnel
Near Idaho Springs, Colorado
That enormous rust colored building stepping up the hillside is the Argo Mill, and behind it lies one of the boldest engineering feats of Colorado mining. By the eighteen nineties, the rich mines up around Central City were drowning. Pumping water out of the shafts ate up enormous amounts of the miners' time and money.
A Salt Lake City mining magnate named Samuel Newhouse had a better idea. Instead of lifting the water up and out, dig a tunnel far below the mines and let gravity drain it away. Work on what was first called the Newhouse Tunnel began at Idaho Springs in September of eighteen ninety three and reached its full length, more than four miles, in November of nineteen ten.
It bored under Virginia Canyon, Russell Gulch, Quartz Hill, and Central City itself, draining dozens of mines and giving them an easy path to haul ore downhill to be processed. A huge mill was finished at the mouth of the tunnel around nineteen twelve. Over its lifetime the Argo directly recovered close to one hundred million dollars in gold at the values of the time.
It stands today as one of the most complete surviving gold mills anywhere in the West.
