Goodsprings is an unincorporated community in Clark County, Nevada, 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas and seven miles off Interstate 15. Older records spell it Good Springs.
The old mines around it are abandoned ground. The town itself still has residents. In 1916, the district's best year, 800 people here supported seven bars and six cafes. The 2020 census counted 162.
Lead came out of Potosi Mountain starting in 1856. A narrow-gauge railroad hauled ore down to Jean from 1911 to 1930. The rails were pulled in 1934.
The big department store was sold in 1953 to the Roy Rogers Museum and moved to California. The hotel burned in 1966.
The Pioneer Saloon, built in 1913, is still open, and a video game now brings more visitors in a weekend than the mining town ever housed. Here's how the industry left and the address stayed.
Before Goodsprings, a spring called Ojito de la Tortuga
A trading party out of New Mexico camped at the water on January 11, 1830, and wrote the stop down as Ojito de la Tortuga, the little spring of the tortoise.
Ancestral Puebloan and Southern Paiute people had used it long before Antonio Armijo came through on what became the Old Spanish Trail.
Goodsprings, spelled Good Springs in older records, is an unincorporated community in southern Clark County, Nevada, on the southeastern side of the Spring Mountains, seven miles from Interstate 15 and 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.
The name comes from Joseph Good, a miner and cattleman who settled there in the 1860s.
Lead at Potosi, then a stone cabin in 1886
Mormon miners from the Las Vegas Springs mission started working lead at Potosi Mountain in 1856.
They got out 9,000 pounds and quit the next year because the smelting failed. Nevada calls Potosi the state's first abandoned mine.
California interests reopened it in 1861 with a smelter and a camp for 100 men.
By 1883, Joseph Yount, Harsha White, and Ben Hamilton were working around the Boss mine; the Yellow Pine district had formed in 1882.
In 1886 a Utah promoter, A. G. Campbell, ran a new round of development at the springs, holding townsite land and mining interests.
The cabin built that year, stone laid up without mortar, is still the oldest building in town.
Whatever came out of the ground still had to reach a railroad.
The 12.5-mile line built to beat hauling costs
Mineral Union built a mill near the springs in 1898, and the post office opened in Sam Yount's stone store a year later.
The Los Angeles-Salt Lake railroad crossed southern Nevada in 1905.
It missed the town, but its station at Goodsprings Junction, renamed Jean soon after, was seven miles off.
Yellow Pine Mining Company closed the last gap itself.
Rails reached town from Jean in June 1911 and the mines later that summer: 12.5 miles of 36-inch narrow gauge, much of it secondhand track from the Quartette Mine railroad at Searchlight.
The line moved more than 72,000 tons of ore, and rock too poor to haul by wagon was suddenly worth milling.
Seven bars and six cafes in Goodsprings, 1916
School began in a tent in 1907 with Winifred Hardy teaching.
The schoolhouse that replaced it went up in 1913 for $2,000, and its bell tower survived every later remodeling.
George Fayle put up the Pioneer Saloon and the Goodsprings Cafe that same year from prefabricated kits, pressed metal on the walls, cherry-wood Brunswick bars bought secondhand out of Rhyolite.
In 1916 he added a big mercantile store and the Mission-style Fayle Hotel, with hot running water, electric lights, and steam heat in the rooms.
That was the peak year: 800 residents, seven bars, and six cafes. The district produced $25 million in minerals over its life, mostly lead and zinc.
Two fires at the mill, and then the big store left town
Fire took the Yellow Pine concentrator on September 19, 1924. Rebuilt by 1926, it burned again on June 10, 1928.
1929 was the last year of ore shipments, the narrow gauge shut down in 1930, and the rails came up in 1934.
The raised grade is still there south of the community park.
By mid-century, the commercial strip had thinned.
Fayle's big store was sold in 1953 and moved to Roy Rogers' California attraction, leaving a concrete foundation.
Fire took the Fayle Hotel in 1966, and its lot west of the Goodsprings Cafe is the biggest gap in the street.
The schoolhouse stayed put and joined the National Register in 1992.
The saloon that outlasted the mines
The Pioneer sat closed and boarded up from 1954 to 1960.
Noel Sheckells bought it in December 2006, repaired the building, and marketed its mining-era history, then sold it to Stephen Staats for $1.5 million in 2021.
It still operates at 310 West Spring Street.
Fallout: New Vegas shipped in 2010 and opens in a version of the town, with a Prospector Saloon modeled on the Pioneer.
Players started driving out to compare the two.
By November 2024, thousands of fans were arriving for the annual celebration, in a town of under 200 residents.
Clearing land for that event in October 2025 turned up a box of dynamite with a 1920s Apache Powder label.
Part of the town was evacuated until the bomb squad made it safe.
The last school day, May 21, 2026
By the 2025-2026 school year, Goodsprings Elementary had two students, one teacher, and one support employee.
The school board voted on April 23, 2026, to close it for community reuse, which freed $1 million in rural-school funding.
Residents objected over the longer trip and the fate of the 1913 building. K-5 students now ride to Sandy Valley Elementary, 12 miles away.
The last day came on May 21, 2026, 113 years after the first class there, and they rang the original bell.
The 2020 census counted 162 residents, in a town ringed by abandoned mines and tailings.
The Citizens Advisory Council still meets at the community center on West San Pedro Avenue, the historical society still walks visitors past the empty lots, and the saloon still serves whoever turns off the interstate.
The schoolhouse is waiting on a tenant.
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