{"id":1718,"slug":"ophir-historic-district-ophir-utah","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Ophir, in Tooele County's Oquirrh Mountains about fifty miles southwest of Salt Lake City, took its name from the biblical land of King Solomon's gold — a name miners gave the canyon and district when rich chloride-silver ores were found on Lion and Tiger hills. The first claim, the Silveropolis, was located August 23, 1870, and the strikes that followed — the Tampico, Mountain Lion, Defiance, Silver Chief — made Ophir one of Utah Territory's first mining districts.","It made industrial history early: in June 1871 the Walker Brothers erected their fifteen-stamp Pioneer Mill at Ophir, the first stamp mill in the territory, processing roughly thirty tons of ore a day. The town boomed into the thousands through the 1870s; some mines on Lion Hill played out quickly, but the district — led by the Hidden Treasure and Ophir Hill workings — produced silver, lead, copper, zinc, and gold, on and off, for a century, with operations recorded as late as 1959."]},{"heading":"An inhabited ghost town","paragraphs":["Ophir never emptied. Its peak thousands shrank to a small resident population, but the town kept its buildings: the frame, false-fronted Ophir Town Hall of the early 1870s is the oldest surviving nineteenth-century mining-town city hall in Utah — one of only three left from the era — and was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey and listed on the National Register.","The file's own source draws the operative line: the district is included for mining and ghost-town heritage, and the settlement is not wholly abandoned — residents live among the old buildings. No haunting claim attaches; Ophir is filed as a boomtown that survived its boom."]}],"name":"Ophir Historic District","aliases":[],"type":"GHOST_TOWN","type_label":"Ghost Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Partially inhabited former mining community.","full_desc":"Ophir Historic District is a ghost town in Ophir, Utah. Partially inhabited former mining community. HauntHunt files it with ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.","address":null,"city":"Ophir","county":null,"state":"Utah","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":40.370055,"lon":-112.255963,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Included as mining/ghost-town heritage; source explicitly distinguishes ghost towns from alleged hauntings. Settlement is not wholly abandoned.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":49.3,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Ophir retains historic mining-town buildings; residents still live there. A ghost town's file is unusual: the emptiness itself is documented, and this entry is part of that record. Media accounts document it — reported history rather than legend. The record appears in 'Get Your Spook On: Northern Utah’s Most Haunted Places'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Get Your Spook On: Northern Utah’s Most Haunted Places","url":"https://www.visitutah.com/articles/get-your-spooky-on","publisher":"Visit Utah","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Get Your Spook On: Northern Utah’s Most Haunted Places","url":"https://www.visitutah.com/articles/get-your-spooky-on","publisher":"Visit Utah","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}