From 1850 to 1956 this mine produced 5.8 million ounces of gold from 367 miles of tunnels; docents at Bourn Cottage report cold drafts and presences that don't explain themselves.
10791 E Empire Street, Grass Valley, CA 95945
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Adults $5; youth (6+) $5; children 5 and under free. No fee for park trails. Cash, check, or credit card accepted.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved paths to main mine structures and Bourn Cottage. Mine shaft openings are fenced and not accessible. Trails are unpaved and vary in difficulty.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1850 · National Historic Landmark · 106 Years of Continuous Gold Mining · 5.8 Million Ounces of Gold Produced · Willis Polk Architecture (Bourn Cottage) · California State Historic Park
Gold was first extracted from the Empire Mine site in October 1850, one year after the California Gold Rush's opening rush. The mine changed hands multiple times before William Bowers Bourn acquired control through his father in 1869. In 1878 Bourn formed the Original Empire Co., and in 1896 — after a period when the mine had been sold off — reacquired the property and began the most productive era of its operation.
Bourn commissioned San Francisco architect Willis Polk to design the estate complex in 1897, including the 'Cottage' — a misnomer for what is in fact a substantial Arts and Crafts country house set in formal gardens. Polk's design for the Cottage was a departure from the industrial character of the mine itself, creating a domestic retreat of considerable elegance a few hundred feet from the main shaft.
The miners who extracted the gold worked in conditions that were hazardous by any standard. The 367 miles of underground passages reached an incline depth of 11,007 feet. Accidents, cave-ins, silicosis from rock dust, and equipment failures killed workers across the mine's 106-year history. The exact number of deaths over the full operational period has not been compiled in a single public record, but the scale of the operation and its duration make significant casualties certain.
Newmont Mining purchased the mine from Bourn in 1928 and operated it until closure in 1956. California State Parks acquired the property in 1975, establishing it as a state historic park. The park opened to the public with the surface structures intact — head frame, stamp mill, Pelton wheels, blacksmith shop, and the Cottage with its gardens.
Sources
The paranormal reports at Empire Mine State Historic Park begin with the people who work there. Docents stationed at Bourn Cottage — William Bourn Jr.'s summer home — have described, over years of tours, cold drafts that appear with no open windows or HVAC explanation, creaking floorboards in rooms where no one is walking, and a persistent sense of being observed. These are not theatrical claims; they come from park staff with professional reasons to be neutral.
The mine structures themselves are where independent investigators have concentrated. A Class A EVP — a recording clear enough to be intelligible without interpretation — captured a male voice saying 'Get away from there.' A second EVP captured the phrase 'Not today, not today.' The source of both recordings was a mine structure where visitors were not present at the time.
A tourist named Donna Hoffman reported seeing a man in period clothing — heavily worn, consistent with 19th-century mining dress — striking a rock face with a pickaxe. The strike produced no sound. When she called out, the figure turned to look at her and then faded. Her account, preserved in the Costa Rican Times' documentation of the site, is consistent with what investigators call a residual haunting — a replay of an action rather than an interactive presence.
The scale of the mine's death toll over 106 years is not precisely documented. The nature of hard rock gold mining in this period — the silica dust, the explosives, the miles of narrow passages — produced casualties that were not comprehensively recorded. The park does not promote its paranormal reputation, but neither do the docents who report the Cottage activity deny what they have experienced.
Walk 367 miles of underground passages distilled into a surface-level historic park: the mine head frame, stamp mills, Pelton wheels, the mine owner's cottage, and the blacksmith shop. Guided tours of Bourn Cottage — William Bourn Jr.'s summer home, designed by architect Willis Polk — are available on weekends. Docents have reported cold drafts and creaking floors in the Cottage with no mechanical explanation.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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