Stolen rare mining museum artifact recovered | TheUnion.com

Stolen rare mining museum artifact recovered | TheUnion.com: "Stolen rare mining museum artifact recovered"

A rare wooden mining ore cart was recovered along the side of a road just outside Nevada City Monday morning, less than a week after it was stolen from the North Star Mine Powerhouse and Pelton Wheel Museum in Grass Valley, according to the Grass Valley Police Department.

As reported in Monday's edition of The Union, the museum officials had offered a $200 reward for the 75-year-old stolen wooden cart after they noticed the artifact missing from a line of seven more-common metal ore carts in the museum's outdoor yard on Allison Ranch Road five days ago.

“We just don't know how to say it,” said museum Director Robert Shoemaker about the cart's return.

“It's just wonderful.”

The wood cart was a rare piece of the area's rich mining history. With more than $440,000,000 worth of gold extracted from 1848-1965, Nevada County was the most gold-producing county in California, according to California Division of Mines and Geology estimates.

With hundreds of operations that dug thousands of mining miles beneath the county, sturdy ore carts were critical, Shoemaker told The Union Sunday.

By the 1920s, most of those operations had switched over to metal ore carts because the wood carts were far less durable, which is why few remain, Shoemaker said.

Shoemaker estimated the stolen mine cart would fetch more than $1,500 if sold to a collector.

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