Belmont History!

After the finding of silver by the indians in 1865 which led to the Highbridge mine, the camp of Belmont was founded. The town grew to two sites, East and West Belmont which ended up having around 4000 people. By February of 1867 the town was selected to be the County Seat for Nye County and would hold this title until 1905. The corut House was started and finish being built in 1874 at a cost of around $4.000 dollars.

Belmont got it's post office in 1867 with a large number of businesses now being present, such as the Highbridge Hotel, San Francisco Restaurant, National Bank, Cosmopolitan Saloon and about a hundred others.

With the heavy mining load of ore present, Belmont had it's share of mills, a total of five. Ther e was a ten stamp built in 1866 and ran until 1869. Another was a twenty stamp that was built in 1867, this mill was short lived and move to Esmeralda County sometime in 1880. The largest and best known was the 40 stamp Combination Mill built in 1868. There were also a 30 stamp named the El Dorado and a 20 stamp named the Monitor-Belmont, both these mills were quartz stamps.

The now known Highbridge Mill (Cameron), was built from the bricks of the old Combination and later the old Highbridge around 1915.