Aruba Gold Mill Ruins

Long before tourism shaped its economy, Aruba was swept up in a lucrative, 19th-century gold rush. The island’s golden era ignited in 1824 when a young shepherd boy accidentally discovered a lump of gold while herding sheep in a dry creek bed. As news of the discovery spread, fortune-seekers flocked to the island, eventually extracting more than 3 million pounds of gold ore over the course of the century. To process this staggering amount of raw rock, complex industrial smelting facilities were built across the island. The most famous of these is the Bushiribana Gold Mill, erected in 1872 out of massive, dry stone limestone blocks on the windswept northern coast. Its fortress-like walls and high chimneys were engineered specifically to protect valuable mercury supplies from pirates while utilizing the heavy trade winds to blow away rock dust.