The story
Candelaria's silver was found by Mexican prospectors in 1864 — the name honors Candlemas — but the town boomed after 1876, growing to well over a thousand people in one of the driest townsites in the West. Every drop of water was hauled in by wagon and sold; in the early years it cost a dollar a gallon, famously making whiskey the cheaper drink, and the town suffered typhoid for want of washing water.
The Carson & Colorado railroad reached Candelaria in 1882 and a pipeline eventually eased the thirst, but the silver crash of the 1890s broke the district. It produced fitfully into the twentieth century — the post office held on until 1939 — and then let go.
Modern open-pit mining in the 1980s reworked the hills around the old town, so today original stone ruins and the cemetery sit beside the geometric benches of industrial pits: two mining eras, one landscape.
What remains today
Stone building ruins and foundations along the old main street, the cemetery, mine dumps from both eras, and the earthworks of the 1980s open-pit operations nearby.
Questions from the field
- Why was water so expensive in Candelaria?
- The townsite has no local water source — every gallon was hauled in by team from springs miles away and sold by the gallon, at times for about a dollar, until a pipeline was built in the 1880s.
- Is Candelaria safe to explore?
- The old townsite is walkable, but the district includes both century-old shafts and 1980s open pits — keep away from pit edges and any underground openings.
- Where is Candelaria?
- In Mineral County between Mina and Coaldale, a short graded-road drive off US-95 — an easy add-on to a US-95 ghost-town run.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Candelaria — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
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Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Candelaria's permanent record.
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Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 857457
- — Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology — Candelaria district
- — Carson & Colorado Railroad records