Mina was founded as a railroad town in 1905 and was named for Ferminia Sarras, also known as the “Copper Queen.” Sarras came to Nevada sometime around 1881, which was the date she was first listed on Esmeralda County tax records, described as “Spanish Lady, Belleville.”
Writing in the September/October 2011 edition of “Nevada Magazine,” Jeffery Richardson imagines Sarras, “Her gaze is steady and frank. Her hands are sure at their task, as she has done this many times before. Her gear has been stacked and is being wrapped expertly in canvas into a pack she will soon hoist on her back.”
She began prospecting in the Candelaria area in 1883 and went on to file a number of claims on copper mines in the Sante Fe district. Sarras spent a few years prospecting in Silver Peak, but didn’t have much luck during the 1890s, a time when Nevada was in an economic depression.
She returned to the Sante Fe district in 1899, and it was there that she eventually made her fortune. Sarras prospected alone wearing pants, boots and a back pack.
Sarras described herself as “a Spanish lady of royal blood.” She was a descendant of Roderigo de Contreras, governed during the 16th century.
In her native country, Sarras was married to Pablo Flores and gave birth to four daughters, Conchetta, Conceptión, Juanita and Emma. When she arrived in Nevada, she placed the two youngest girls in the Nevada Orphans Asylum in Virginia City.
Noted author and Nevada historian Sally Zanjani, speculates Sarras may have thought her “daughters would be safer…than at the mining camps of Belleville and Candelaria.”
It appears she may have been married as many as five times, often to men who were younger than she. One newspaper article claims all of her husbands died violent deaths.
One of those was Archie McCormack, a man described as a Canadian-born gunman was killed in 1906 in a gunfight while defending one of her claims.
Each time she made a profitable sale, Ferminia would travel to San Francisco, stay in the finest hotels, shop for elegant clothes and enjoy fine dining and young men until her money ran out. Then she would return to Nevada and resume prospecting for another fortune.
By the time she died February 1, 1915, Sarras had made several fortunes on her copper mines. She’s buried in the town of Luning’s cemetery with a massive monument places over the grave, however in the years since vandals have destroyed the headstone.
Grass Valley author Chris Enss writes of Sarras in her 2008 book, “A Beautiful Mine: Women Prospectors of the Old West,” that the “claims she owned in Giroux Canyon, Nevada, are still being mined today and Ferminia’s descendants continue to benefit from her findings there.”
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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