Worker stands atop machinery outside of mill in Sinaloa, Mexico.

McGill Mill before fire. The mill burned to the ground in July 1922.

From the KLVX Steamboats on the Colorado Photograph Collection (PH-00156)

Pioche locamotive on an elevated railroad track running through a mill. The city of Bullionville was founded by John H. Ely and W.H. Raymond in 1870, but is now a deserted settlement and a ghost town.

Mill workers at Ely Valley Mill, Pioche. Coal bins on right (now demolished). Coal loaded onto narrow gauge trains to Jackrabbit. Steam engines fired with coal hauled one to transfer station at Pioche depot. Buildings on left still exist. L-R 1. Bill Webb 2. Bob Schulz 3? 4? 5. Charlie Wilson, 6. James Deck 7. Charlie Van Allen 8. Shorty Long 9. Shorty Barnes.

The old stamp mill, location unknown. A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking material down is a type of unit operation. A stamp mill consists of a set of heavy steel (iron-shod wood in some cases) stamps, loosely held vertically in a frame, in which the stamps can slide up and down. They are lifted by cams on a horizontal rotating shaft. On modern mills, the cam is arranged to lift the stamp from the side, so that it causes the stamp to rotate. This evens the wear on the shoe at the foot of the stamp. As the cam moves from under the stamp, the stamp falls onto the ore below, crushing the rock, and the lifting process is repeated at the next pass of the cam. Each one frame and stamp set is sometimes called a "battery" or, confusingly, a "stamp" and mills are sometimes categorized by how many stamps they have, i.e. a "10 stamp mill" has 10 sets. They usually are arranged linearly, but when a mill is enlarged, a new line of them may be constructed rather than extending the line. Abandoned mill sites (as documented by industrial archaeologists) will usually have linear rows of foundation sets as their most prominent visible feature as the overall apparatus can exceed 20 feet in height, requiring large foundations. Stamps are usually arranged in sets of five. Some ore processing applications used large quantities of water so some stamp mills are located near natural or artificial bodies of water. For example, the Redridge Steel Dam was built to supply stamp mills with process water.

Caption: From a boat in mid-stream, looking west. [above] Southwestern Mining Co. Quartz Mill, Mouth of El Dorado Canyon, Boarding House, Store, Millmen's cabins, Weather Observation Station [below]