Welcome to The Park City Museum. This is one good place to start or finish your Historic Mine hike. The museum is the place to learn more about Park City’s mining history as well as how our historic mining town reinvented itself to become one of the world’s leading outdoor recreational destinations.
Before becoming Park City’s history museum, this building was initially Park City’s City Hall and housed the town’s first jail. In fact, the original jail can still be visited in the basement of the museum! Built in 1885, the original City Hall interior was gutted in the 1898 fire that destroyed nearly all the buildings on Main Street. A few walls remained. You can learn more about the fire if you take the Experience Park City History Tour, which is another of the guided tours within the TravelStorys offerings in Park City.
Morgan Pierce is Executive Director of the Park City Museum
This Historic Mine route hike is truly an extension of our museum into the hills surrounding Park City, Utah.
Numerous remnants of our more than 140-year history can still be seen in the area. This hike will take you to many of them. A visit to the museum will help bring it all together with exhibits including historic photos and mining relics on display.
Along the hike route, you will see remnants of the Silver King Aerial Tram. Take a look at the outside of the museum to the right as you are facing it, and you can see one of the ore buckets from the tram. You can also see a statue of Bud Wright, who makes a photographic appearance standing on a tram tower later in the hike. We encourage you to visit the Silver King Mine on the hike. That’s where the mine shaft was located.
Stop back at the museum afterward, and you can see an actual hoist cage that was used by the miners to travel up and down the shaft. You will also hear about drain tunnels and visit the actual portal for The Judge Tunnel up in Empire Canyon. Another amazing display inside the museum is a giant, clear plastic model of the surrounding hills showing how all the major shafts and tunnels are connected.