Ruby Hill: Eureka's Ghost on the Hill

Ruby Hill sits about three miles west of Eureka, and its story runs on a short, strange track. Silver was discovered here in eighteen sixty-five. By eighteen seventy-three a post office opened, and two years later miners built the Ruby Hill Railroad, three miles long and three feet wide, exactly the dimensions needed to haul ore down to Eureka's smelters.

At its peak in eighteen seventy-eight the town held twenty-five hundred people and a newspaper. The ore thinned in the eighteen eighties and most residents left. In nineteen ten a cloudburst washed out the railroad and ended it for good.

Today Ruby Hill is a ghost town within sight of the main road, a satellite that burned out when its host city did.