As always, discussion of the Silver Mine Adventure garners much interest. After my last article on the attraction published a few weeks ago, I’ve heard from a couple of people who were around when it closed.
The day of publication, Jay Hamburger, our esteemed local reporter, reached out to me regarding part of the mystery of a lack of news coverage. Jay wrote a story about the Silver Mine Adventure closing – he believes it was a November 1999 issue of the Park Record – but he cannot find the story in the Park Record database and does not have a personal copy.
That led me to ask: if Jay knows he wrote about the closure, then why have I not been able to find it? So I dug into the 1999 Park Records we have at the Museum – and it turns out we are missing every issue from April through November (If anyone has any of those issues, we’d love to have them!). I do not know why we have this random gap in an otherwise very consistently collected catalogue.
What I do know is that I also misattributed some information in the article a few weeks ago. That information also turned out to be hearsay, as opposed to what happened. Here is the incorrect paragraph in full:
“Issue three was an alleged self-inflicted wound. With its incredible success and reputation, longtime local Rory Murphy (who helped launch and run the experience) related in an interview that the Silver Mine Adventure appeared on the radar of Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. Six Flags decided to invest in or buy the Silver Mine Adventure and, as with all of its other holdings, open the business up to the stock market. Apparently, and unfortunately, Six Flags did not advertise their new holding, so when the Silver Mine Adventure launched on Wall Street, no one knew what it was and the stock fairly quickly tanked, making the local Park City attraction a casualty of the worldwide stock exchange.”
Rory kindly pointed out the mistake and misattribution, and offered to give the full story; so I finally sat down with him for a full oral history interview, rather than the informal one we had done a couple of years ago.
Credit: Park City Historical Society & Museum, Rotary Club Collection
Rory was actually hired to be the project manager for the construction of the Silver Mine Adventure (and perform a few other responsibilities) for United Park City Mines (UPCM), who owned the experience and most of the land surrounding Park City town. He moved here for that job in 1994.
Ultimately, the Silver Mine Adventure cost a pretty penny to develop, with two above-ground exhibit halls, one below-ground exhibit hall, maintenance on the mine itself, and hiring everyone to make it happen. After it opened, UPCM was never able to recoup what they put into it, let alone turn a profit.
The only full quarter that the Silver Mine Adventure turned a profit was the one in which Rory temporarily took over as general manager for the experience. It was a job that required constant management of the people running the museum and mine experience, so that everything ran efficiently and cost effectively. Unfortunately, the outside companies that were tasked with management for the attraction were more focused on administration than management, according to Rory.
UPCM president Hank Rothwell fired the first company, from Tennessee, rather abruptly, allowing Rory to take the reigns for a few months and show that the Silver Mine Adventure could be both popular and profitable. As United Park City Mines was a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange at the time, the overall vision and direction was handed down from their board of directors. They decided to pivot to an attraction management company from Texas. After another two years went by with little return, the board decided to shut the whole thing down.
“I’m [in New York] and Hank and I are making one last pitch to keep it open. And the chairman of the board, a guy named Joe Lesser – I’ll never forget this – goes ‘Enough! We’re closing it down. I don’t want to hear any more.’ It killed me. [I knew it could be done right] and that’s what killed me.”
And so the Silver Mine Adventure closed. Rory was tasked with letting everyone know they no longer had a job – approximately 80 people. “It was painful,” he told me. “It was a lousy, lousy day.”
After that, UPCM sold off the mine and water rights, plus the exhibit halls and headframe building for the Ontario No. 3 to the Jordanelle Special Service District, who still owns it all today.
Rory sat back and shook his head, considering the rise and fall: “It’s a damned shame… It was great while it lasted.”