Silica
About 1927, Arthur C. Moses located a deposit of silica sand near the southern end of Moapa Valley and started the Spartan Silica Sand Company. A washing plant was built at Silica along the St. Thomas Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, connected to the mine by a four-mile road, and by spring 1928 silica was being shipped to the Dixon Glass Company, Standard American Glass Company, and Columbia Glass Company. That summer the plant was enlarged, and annual production increased to about 30,000 tons.
Spartan went out of business in 1930, and in February 1934 the properties were taken over by F.L. Morledge & Lloyd Veitch. Production dropped to less than 20,000 tons per year, and by 1936 it had become apparent that the plant would be below the water level of the rising Lake Mead. The plant was submerged in 1939, and Morledge & Veitch were subsequently put out of business as well. The sand mine was acquired by Nevada Silica Sands, Inc. in 1942, who built a new plant in 1947. Silica sand is still produced from the old mine, but at Silica on the railroad only cement ruins remain of the original plant, long since re-emerged from Lake Mead's depths.
