Interesting places to visit in
El Paso Mountains

One of the attractions in this area is Burro Schmidt’s tunnel. This person’s name was originally William Schmidt. This man worked on a two thousand foot tunnel for around thirty years and there are people that believe that he was crazy for doing this. This man supposedly used all the ore that he found to continue building this tunnel that didn’t lead to anywhere for thirty years. It is said that the tunnel this man built has a room which has a wash tub that is half full of gold. Supposedly the entrance is covered in debris. It has never been found though.

Randsburg
Randsburg is one of the places that breathes of gold. This area is the impersonation of the Mother Lode. A great number of the residents in this area believe this area still has a great amount of gold hidden and just waiting to be discovered. Perhaps they are not mistaken. There have been times in which this area was considered to stripped of all the gold it once had, however every time it was said, the place prospered and did well. Gold, scheelite, and silver have been found by miners, prospectors and those seeking for great adventure in this area. The first time that gold was discovered in Randsburg was in 1895 in Summit Dry Diggens. The prospectors that went there had run out of provisions and thought that this area would always remain to be a waste of time. One of the prospectors had seen a little bit of gold on Rand Mountain though and they figured they might as well attempt to find the area the gold had been found once again. By the time they got to this area they were practically out of food. This group of men had been grubstaked by one of the wives who said she has spent all of the money on something she had wanted to do. The prospectors were distraught and when they got to Rand Mountain decided to take a break and rest; by this time they had already been searching for three days and had not found anything. One of the men who used to be a carpenter, decided to start chipping at a ledge he had been sitting on top of. However, while looking closely, the man was able to see that the rock of the ledge looked different. When he came to the realization of what he had run into, he began jumping of excitement. This mine turned out to be one of the richest mines in the area. The Yellow Aster brought about 12 million dollars worth in gold. These men, who at that point had nothing, not even enough food to eat, were rich from one day to the next. Together these men (three all together) produced around $800.00 during the first three months by hand.  The Yellow Aster became well known later on as it produced around $63,000.00 in one month alone. This obviously caused there to be a small rush as many prospectors invaded the area and more mines started opening.