The Sterling Hill Mining Museum

09/06/2022

The Fall Mineral Show at the Pavilion at Sterling Hill Mining Museum September 24 and 25, 2022 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

06/02/2022

over a billion years ago our ore body was believed to have been pushed as deep as 13 miles into the earth. The tremendous heat and pressure at that depth made the ore like soft plastic and when the plates started moving about 300 million years ago in the "mountain building " era the ore folded back on itself in areas and hardened into these ribbons.

06/07/2021

Great News! We plan on opening for 1:00 PM tours on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays starting July 1, 2021. Please call 973-209-7212 at least 5 days in advance to reserve a spot on a tour as there is limited space on each tour. Thank you for your patience during these trying times. Hope to see you soon.

12/03/2020

T.B.T. Late seventies favorite shot of a long straight drift. Probably taken on 340 level . Shows how each individual round was taken advancing 9 feet at a time. Just a small part of the 35 miles of tunnelling done at Sterling Hill.
Next shot shows a miner next to some loaded 2 ton ore cars. Not much room to manuever , I can remember having to climb over the cars occasionally in a particularly tight drift.
Next shot shows that to take your load of ore to the ore pass was not always a straight shot. Sometimes you had to go past a switch, get off the motor get past the cars throw the switch and get back on to go down a different tunnel. On a really good day of tramming (loading and unloading ore cars ) you could get as many as 80 or 90 of these cars into the ore pass.

Photos taken by Doug Francisco

04/09/2020

In the early days of mining miners did not have the technology of opening up huge areas without the roof caving in so they left supporting pillars . They would mine 20 foot wide stopes then leave a 20 wide pillar then a stope then a pillar and so on. The pillars they left were high grade ore. The stopes were hundreds of feet high and after mined were filled with sand and waste rock. Our job in later years was to " rob " these pillars. we had to leave 3 foot walls between us and the sand filled stope. These walls were fragile because of the adjacent blasting in the stope. Very dangerous work and many walls broke through allowing the sand to run in and swallow up men and equipment. The one picture is a drawing of this operation. The other picture is me in a pillar, you can see how narrow it was but the ore was of such high grade that it was worth the effort.

02/26/2020

02/26/2020

Be sure to check out Kindred Spirits this Friday February 28, 2020 at 9 PM on the Travel Channel featuring The Sterling Hill Mine. Watch with all your friends cause you don't want to watch alone!!!

02/04/2020

Thank you Jersey’s Best for a great video of our beloved mine!!!!!

12/31/2019

We are honored to be hosting this Go Fund Me for the school and town. Great things happen when we all come together.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2418937905086797&id=1652625521718043

December 1st our area was tragically hit by an ice and snow storm. It blew through Sussex County wreaking havoc trees fell, branches broke 100% of Ogdensburg lost power for days. We all were left stunned and surprised by this storm. What we saw come from ...

12/26/2019

SPECIAL HOLIDAY HOURS 12/26 - 12/31
Gift Shop 9:30 - 3:30
Rock DIscovery 12:00
Public Tour 1:00
Please feel free to call with questions 973-209-7212