It doesn’t take much for a century-old mine shaft to cave in around you. Or for the mercury, lead or arsenic leftovers to leech into the Silver State’s already strained groundwater supply. That’s why, ...

The ghosts of the Silver State’s mining roots aren’t just spooky — they’re a serious environmental hazard. About half a million abandoned mines lie untouched across America, polluting waterways and ...

This surreal DIY museum is a must-see if you find yourself exploring the southwestern region of the U.S. and love singular ...

Most of the hundreds of thousands of hardrock mines that leak arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals into our waterways are located in the Western United States. It’s estimated, for example, that there ...

Nevada is home to over 600 ghost towns, many of which are the remnants of the gold rush era of the 1800s and 1900s. Some of these ghost towns are well known, like Rhyolite, but others are just ...

It’s a brisk day in Johannesburg, a tiny mining town tucked among the Rand Mountains in the Mojave Desert. The landscape is vast and rugged, a mishmash of rock, dirt and creosote bushes, swaths of ...