Cherry Creek

If you wander the unpaved streets of Cherry Creek, a living ghost town, with a population of around 70 people, you'll find plenty of abandoned houses that are slowly withering away. They were built in the late 1800s by hard rock miners who came to Nevada in search of fortune. Today relics sit side by side with newer homes, occupied by people who still work a few of the mining claims. Some of them brought in mobile homes, while others beefed up old buildings and added new rooms. There are even a few mud houses remaining that were half-buried in the ground. They had wooden floors and doors and wooden beam roofs, on which sod was piled. All of this variety makes for a cacophony of architectural styles.

The house you see here was one of the first brick structures built in Cherry Creek and now it's the sole surviving brick building. That wood you see in front of the door might seem like a porch, but it isn't exactly. It was the porch's roof. A tremor, or maybe age weakened the supports and down it came.

Cherry Creek got its start in 1872 when two old sourdoughs located silver ore and named the strike, the Tea Cup Mine. One year later, there were nine other claims along with a town of around 400 people. Legend holds that the town’s name came from a small creek that got its name from either wild cherries or chokecherry bushes that grew near it. The area went from boom to bust, then fire, then more boom, more fire and more bust. All told there were three cycles of riches to rags over an eleven-year period.

At the top of the boom times, about 1880, Cherry Creek had a transient population of about 6,000 with about 1800 permanent residents. The bustling town at one point had all the services miners needed: a livery stable, blacksmith shop, hotel, boarding houses, restaurants, two stamp mills, a post office and most important to thirsty miners, an amazing twenty-eight saloons. It's reported that altogether a total of some where around $20 million in gold and silver came out of the mining district. Small leaseholders continue to be active, probably because gold is selling at a price that makes it worth the effort to go after the small pockets that are left. Residents own most of the claims.

All the activity that once was and the growth that was the result is certainly not apparent today. You have to use a great deal of imagination to see what it must have been like to be there during the boom years. I think of this brick house as a symbol of the rags to riches to rags history of Cherry Creek. If only that house could talk.


Cherry Creek is located about an hours drive north of Ely.