Six Mile Canyon Whispers
by Glenn Franco Simmons
I am the type of person who has always loved history and investigating whatever local history there was where I lived, as time allowed. And there was not much free time.
With semi-retirement, I have much more time, and for many years, I have been amassing a collection of Virginia City and Comstock Lode photos.
One of the prettiest areas in the Virginia Range of mountains is Six Mile Canyon Road that runs from Virginia City to Dayton Valley.
Fall, winter and spring all have their charms. In summer, on hot days, driving along Six Mile Canyon remains as enchanting as the other seasons as the day’s hot air cools and you can feel the afternoon wind starting.
Huge, colorful Fremont Cottonwoods (Populus fremontii), native to Nevada, grow along what is known as Six Mile Creek or Six Mile, a common water source along the State Route 79, according to Grok AI and Google AI.
Their bright yellow in the morning golden light was quite a contrast with the washed-out color of sagebrush green, dried-out grass, and what I believe is the green of single leaf pinyon pines (scientific name: Pinus monophyla) and Utah junipers.
The pinyon is one of two official Nevada state trees, adopted in 1953. The other is the bristlecone pine.
Pinyons produce edible pine nuts and often grow with Utah juniper on dry, rocky slopes.
Many people roar by several pull-outs on Six Mile Canyon Road. Some are on their way to work, some own the businesses where they work, and some are coming up to Virginia City for a good time.
The hills here quiet down once you hike away from the road, where cars can be seen and heard no more. (Except for occasional motorcycles.)
I often stop close to Sugarloaf Mountain, where I can hike far beyond State Route 79, which is what Six Mile Canyon Road is officially named.
Sugar Loaf Mountain’s GPS, according to Grok AI, is: 39.3066, -119.6046. I hike a bit north of that.
The Butters Mill was built in Six Mile Canyon east of Virginia City, on the lower slopes of Sugarloaf Peak, around the turn of the 20th cent
It was here in the middle of nowhere on the Virginia City side of Sugar Loaf Mountain, that Charles Butters saw potential in the mining waste piles that dotted The Comstock Lode.
He felt there was enough gold and silver in those “waste” piles to justify building Butters Mill (or the Butters Plant or Butters Cyanide Mill), a cyanide-processing plant that would import ore waste from throughout Nevada. The facility was located below Sugarloaf Mountain on the Virginia City side.
“{It} was described in contemporary and historical sources as the largest cyanide mill in the United States (and sometimes implied as the world at that exact moment),” according to Grok AI. “It had an initial capacity of around 100–200 tons per day, employed hundreds of workers, and was a pioneering large-scale application of the cyanide leaching process on the Comstock’s old tailings piles.”
The Comstock Lode had world-renown professionals, from architects, miners, builders, businessmen to many others.
Butters, one of those geniuses, was a globally recognized cyanide technology expert.
“He helped perfect {cyanide-based process} in South Africa,” Grok AI said, “and {that} mill was a major engineering achievement for its era.”
The Butters Mill was built in Six Mile Canyon east of Virginia City, on the lower slopes of Sugarloaf Peak, around the turn of the 20th cent
The Six Mile Mill “was one of the largest cyanide mills in the United States at the time, designed to reprocess massive tailings piles from earlier 19th-century silver and gold mining operations using the new cyanide leaching process to extract remaining precious metals,” Grok AI noted.
“The mill featured a large wooden structure with an aerial tramway system and processed around 100 tons of material per day at its peak, employing hundreds of workers,” Grok continued. “It also handled ore from places like Tonopah later. Operations continued into the 1920s or 1930s, after which it was abandoned.”
I have not yet hiked that side of Sugarloaf Mountain or explored the facility’s ruins which stretch up the mountain from its base, all the way to the road’s edge.
Whether you stop at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain or a pull-out, take some time to listen. Maybe you might hear the Northern Flickers and Red-tailed Hawks, as I did. Both are fantastically beautiful birds.
And, if the remnants of a Zephyr filter through the canyons, let the ghosts have their say. They are quieter than they used to be, but they are still talking. You only need to listen.
(Photos of cottonwoods © by GTFS. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.)
