Black Queen Mine

Sam and Tim Harmon grubstaked two of the first miners to explore Crystal River Valley. In return, they received controlling interest in the silver the miners discovered. Thus, they set up the Black Queen Mine¹ and worked three good veins from 1869 until 1893. In its heyday, the mine employed two shifts of five workers each and produced $50,000 worth of silver a year from 1879 to 1891. Fred Keeperly, a foreman at the mine, developed a way to mill the ore at the mine, which solved many of the transportation woes before the Crystal River Railroad came in 1880. But snowslides, explosions, and spring floods increased operating costs so that expanding the mine became impossible. When the price of silver plummeted in the Panic of 1893, the Black Queen closed down. Sam’s wife, Dell, died of fever that year, and he moved back East. Tim took a foreman’s job at the quarry.