History

Once an Apache Indian campsite, the boomtown of Silver City appeared in the summer of 1870 as a tent city for thousands of miners after silver was discovered in the area. The Legal Tender silver mine began operating and soon Silver City was flourishing as the supply center for area mining camps and became the Grant County seat in 1871. In 1893 the bottom dropped out of the silver market, many mines closed and mining camps soon became ghost towns, but by this time the cattle industry was well-developed and kept Silver City moving ahead. Today cattle ranching and copper mining are now the main industries.