A highway sign proclaims “Shafter Ghost Town,” and on either side of the two-lane blacktop are ruins of stone and adobe structures amid a handful of houses.
About 70 years ago this patch of West Texas desert was home to a bustling community and one of the nation’s most reliable sources of silver. That all began to wither in 1942 when a wartime work force shortage and plummeting silver prices forced the Presidio Mine to close and hastened Shafter’s demise.
Today, a Canadian company is reviving the mine to take advantage of silver prices that have tripled since 2009, giving the few dozen residents still living in the area more action than they’ve seen in decades. The mine will return significant metals production to Texas for the first time in many years.
“No doubt the price of silver makes this a viable project,” said Sandy McVey, the project manager for mining firm Aurcana Corp, referring to prices that have spiked to more than US$30 an ounce. “And we need to get this mine up and running fast before the window of opportunity closes.”
The Rio Grande Mining Co, acquired by Aurcana Corp in 2008, is building roads and installing underground equipment. Production is estimated at more than 100,000kg of silver annually — about half the amount of the US’ largest single silver operation, the Greens Creek mine in Alaska, produces now.
A groundbreaking last month at the site may have been the biggest event locally in a couple generations. The last high point came in 1971, when film director Robert Wise used the mountains and ghost town of Shafter for scenes in the science fiction thriller The Andromeda Strain.
The original mine opened in 1880, and in 1943 Shafter was home to 1,500 people but now only has about 60 residents.
“There used to be a restaurant here, probably before 1980,” said Patt Sims, who has lived here since 1976. “One cook, one baker, one entertainer, one waitress. They got tired of working 80 hours a week.”
The new project could employ as many as 180 people. A feasibility study published suggested oil field workers could be hired from nearby Presidio and Marfa. Another source of manpower is Ojinaga, Mexico, a town of about 20,000 across the Rio Grande.
Sims, among other residents, wonders what the mine will mean for the area, where people like the quiet life.
“It’ll be interesting to see what comes of it,” she said.
In 1880, the 1,220m-long, 457m-deep Presidio Mine opened and employed as many as 400 people.
Rich Kyle, a geology professor at the University of Texas, said the Shafter project is a major step for a state that hasn’t had significant metal production for decades.
“There are a lot of silver resources on the planet certainly a lot larger and much better, but that’s not the point,” Kyle said. “I’m excited about it personally as a mineral geologist in Texas, a state obviously dominated by the petroleum industry.”
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