There is a lot of mining history in and around Quartzsite. The town is situated in a valley called the La Paz Valley and it along with the surrounding mountains held lots of gold at one time. There was also some silver and a little copper mined here but mostly gold. One 47 ounce nugget was found along with lots of good sized nuggets back in the beginning of the "gold rush" here. There was hard rock mining as well as placer mining. Hard rock mining is where gold is found in rock that needs to be crushed to get the gold out. Placer mining is the kind of mining we do just digging in the dirt and running the material through a machine to separate the gold from the sand.
These old structures are left overs from the old mining days. We guess that they were stamp mills where the gold was processed into saleable gold. It was a little bit of a hike out in the desert close to the long term dry camping area just south of town to get a close look at this bit of history. There were signs near these structures stating that the area was protected as an Arizona historical artifact. People are crazy enough to take pieces of anything as "souvenirs" so Arizona is trying to protect its history by making it illegal to get too close or take anything.
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