Towns of Presidio County

Towns of Presidio County, Texas

Shafter, Texas

If he had been alive 100 years ago, William B. Williams may have raced into town with his burros, shouting "silver!" and bought whisky for every codger in the local saloon. But Williams, a modern prospector who doesn't even own a burro or a miner's pan, speaks in much more modest terms of the silver vein believed buried beneath the mountains in this remote Southwest Texas ghost town west of the Big Bend National Park. "We're in the advanced exploration stage," says Williams, who is in charge of the Gold Field Mining Corp.'s operation, headquartered in an abandoned schoolhouse here. As he spoke, his engineers were busy in the rugged hills about half a mile away on a $40 million hunt for a mother lode that produced more than 35 million ounces of pure silver before it was closed during World War 11. At today's price of about $15, 35 million ounces is worth $525 million. Company officials decline to say how much silver they believe is left in this lonely outpost 20 miles north of Presidio. Gold Field's effort to revive the largest silver mine in Texas history began in 1977 with core drilling. Now, Williams says his miners are ready to take the next big step — digging a test mine shaft to take sample carloads of ore from 1,000 feet beneath the surface. The shaft is expected to be completed this autumn, and if the ore it yields satisfies the engineers, the state's only silver mine could be in full production by 1983. But don't expect newcomers to move into the dozens of adobe houses abandoned a generation ago when the old Shatter Mine shut down. Most of them are crumbling and inhabited mostly -by jackrabbits, scorpions and spiders. In its heyday, Shafter had shops, saloons, churches, and a company store. Today they all stand empty — except for the company store. It has been converted into a residence, and Monk Adams, 72, lives there with his wife Alvene, 66. "At one time this town had as many as 2,500 people. Today we have about 30 — and then you've got to count a few dogs and cats," Adams said. Adams, who lived here during the mine's most productive years and worked for the state highway department, said reviving the old mine was "immaterial" to him. Other oldtimers here were similarly unimpressed. "It's okay with me, but it's never going to be a boom town again," said Glenn Brooks, 76, who lives in a house trailer across Cibilo Creek near the town's old cemetery where his father, who worked in the old mine, is buried. Like the Adams and most other families whose income depended on the mine, Brooks left when the mine closed in 1943. He was one of the few to return. Williams and many of his engineers live in the ranching town of Marfa, 40 miles to the north, and he said he expects if the mine becomes totally operational again a lot of people will live there and commute to Shatter. This was originally a military outpost, and silver was discovered here in 1881, according to Mrs. Adams. Several mining companies owned the mine until it was bought by American Metals, the last company to operate it before it closed. Mrs. Adams and others who lived here when the city was a boom town sav it was not like the rough-andtumble mining camps like those seen in the movies. "There were two saloons in town, but we had a lot of families too," she said. "There were dances and barbecues down by the creek." Then, in 1943, the mine closed. Most people left. Scavengers came in and stripped most houses of anything that could be sold, Adams said. World War II was the main reason the mine closed, according to Dr. Christopher Henry of the University of Texas' Bureau of Economic Geology. "The equipment they needed was being diverted to the war effort, and they were running low on ore," he said "A couple of other companies have gone in there since then, but until now there have only been halfhearted efforts to revive the old mine." But Herb Osborne of Gold Field's Denver, Colo., office, made it clear his company, owned by a British corporation, is making a nononsense effort to recover what silver is left. t "We're looking at investing $30 million to $40 million," Osborne said. "That includes processing facilities to turn the ore into silver or silver concentrates." He said the old methods of mining — men with jackhammers filling small rail wagons with ore — would not be profitable in Shafter today. "You can't mine like that today. Labor is too costly. You have to get diesel equipment underground and hoist six or seven tons at a crack up the shaft at a high rate of speed." And Brooks concedes modern mining methods are much safer. "Lots of people who worked in the old mine stayed here," he said, "but they 're in the graveyard.'' He got up and gestured toward the cemetery, about a half-acre of cactus and yucca plants — and a few headstones worn down by years of sand and wind. "Now you can hardly tell who's buried where because most of the crosses out there have rotted away," he said. "Most of the markers are 'gone."
(The Paris News Wed.. Aug. 20, 1980)

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