Silver King Mine Towers-Photo Print

These towers were the predecessors to the ski towers you ride today.

Construction of the aerial tramway at Park City Mountain Resort began in the summer of 1900 under the supervision of John Breckenridge Fleming, the Silver King Mine’s foreman. Unlike other tramways of the era that used wooden towers, the Silver King Mine’s towers were made from sections of four-inch by four-inch angle iron which is probably why they are still standing today. The final product consisted of 39 towers and 80 ore buckets, each with the capacity to carry roughly 800 pounds of ore, stretching from the Silver King Mill in Woodside Gulch to the Coalition Building on Park Avenue. On June 6, 1901, the Silver King Mining Company put their brand new aerial tramway to work and it operated until 1953.

Utilizing a system of hoppers, bins, conveyor belts, crushing machines, grinders, screens, and elevators, the sampler could transform 175 pounds of crude ore into four one pound representative samples of lead, silver, and gold in just five hours. From the sampler, crude ore was transported via the aerial tramway 7,000 to the Coalition Building loading station in town. The aerial tramway helped double the Silver King output while reducing the cost of transporting crude ore and concentrates from the mine to the railway by 85 percent. Even more impressive, the sprawling system could be operated by a single person.