P a g e 2 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y District spread out for miles along the gulches of Lion Mountain. Why Mountain? Well, when prospector Joe McCreary mistook a white mule for a mountain lion, his fellow miners razed him so badly, they called the whole mountain “Lion” to pick on their buddy so he could never live it down. Or, is that another tall tale? Following the first discoveries, 10 tons of high grade silver-lead ore was shipped to Swansea, Wales for smelting. Towns included in the district were Trapper City, Lion City, Glendale and Hecla. Trapper City was the first settlement of the group but was short lived and abandoned as larger ore bodies were found on the mountain. Lion City sprouted up and grew to 500 people. The original smelter at Glendale which produced one million ounces of silver and thousands of tons of lead and copper annually, succumbed to a fire in 1879. The Hecla Consolidated Mining Company built a new, larger one in its place under the direction of Henry Knippenberg. Knippenberg had the town of Hecla built about a mile from Lion City and it grew to a population of about 1,500 and included a church and a school. It was to be a less rowdy gathering spot than Lion City turned out to be. Knippenberg added the Greenwood concentrator halfway down the mountain a year later. Supplying charcoal to the smelting furnaces at Glendale was a large job as they were using 100,000 bushels of charcoal a Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz month. To help power the nearby operations, Hecla mining ran its own 38 kiln charcoal plant at Canyon Creek north of Glendale. When railroad services arrived in nearby Melrose, this greatly benefited the Hecla Mining operations by bringing many ore deposits within economical distance to the smelters and reduction works. Like so many others, the Bryant District was hit hard by the devastating drop in the price of silver. Production started to slow down and the smelters at Glendale were forced to close in 1900. But over the years, the local mines produced a whopping $22 million in silver and other metals.
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