Places that you may have never heard of

Friends know that I’m a big fan of traveling and do so frequently by car. Whether I’m visiting relatives who live far away or I’m vacationing at distant places, it’s usually a cross country trek.

Anyone who has traveled on our extensive road system has driven past signs denoting names of places of which they’ve never heard. Those places that especially stick out to me are ones that have colorful names. One of my “hobbies” is to note these names and later (sometimes weeks, sometimes months later) find out more about these places.

One of these places is Argenta, Nevada and this is what I learned.

Argenta is a ghost down in central Nevada. In the mid 1860’s prospectors discovered silver in the area. The town was planning to develop as a shipping center for the nearby mines and in Austin to the south. However, the town of Battle Mountain had stronger ties to the silver industry and by 1871 the entire town moved to Battle Mountain making Argenta effectively a mining ghost town.

Argenta remained vacant until 1930 when barite was discovered nearby. This mine in Argenta Mountain was operated by the Baker Hughes Company until it closed in 2015.

Well, that’s the short story about Argenta, NV.

Yet curiosity remains high and I hope to report on other interesting names of places that are part of my hobby.