American Flats mill being torn down

The United Comstock Merger Mill at American Flat in Storey County will be torn down as a hazard.

The mill is located near Gold Hill on property managed by the Bureau of Land Management. It has been used as a place to hold parties, post graffiti, and conduct paintball wars despite physical safety hazards from falling concrete, underground mill sumps filled with water, and holes in the concrete flooring.

All eight mill buildings would be demolished, voids and tunnels filled, and building footprints and other disturbed areas covered with native borrow material/soil and revegetated. Project funding and a schedule for demolition and reclamation of the mill site have not yet been identified.

The mill was built in 1922 to process local gold and silver ore utilizing cyanide vat leaching in what was then described as the largest concrete mill in the United States, which makes it historically significant.

A 2008 audit of the site by the Department of Interior, Office of the Inspector General, found the mill site to be a high risk liability to the U.S. Government.

"The buildings at the mill site will be removed and the site totally reclaimed for public health and safety on public land and to comply with the findings of the OIG," said BLM Sierra Front Field Office Manager Linda Kelly. "Taking this action affords the greatest level of public safety over the long term and is the most feasible to fund and implement."

The BLM will document and interpret historic resources at the mill site as agreed to in a Memorandum of Agreement between the BLM and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office.