SOURS' SILVER MINE
Now, the way I hear'd it was that there was this feller name Sours. He were a Scotsman, they say 'n when he come to Luray, he lived up along the hill where the town now gets its water. Well, Scotty dug a tunnel into the spur of one of them low-lying mountain edges and discovered a pure vein of silver.
Folk suspected something was happening, when Scotty started selling off some silverware. He claimed he had found it in a wooden chest in a cave but he couldn't remember exacty where. They were not too well made, the knives, spoons, forks and plate, but people were convinced old Scotty had made them himself of silver he had mined. Well, sir, the Civil War come along, and Sours, a'feerd the armies would come across his mine entrance, blasted out a pillar and avalanced his mine opening to look like a rock slide. It was a natural-enough rock slide, a small slee not as big as those you see today further South along the Blue Ridge. Then, the story goes, he up and died or got hisself kilt in the war and no one has ever found that Sours Silver Mine site. Some keep a'lookin' for it and more than one rock slide has been worked over in the Luray area with hopes that Scotty had stashed away a few un-used bars of silver
There had been other mining done in the area. About two miles north of Luray at the old Yager place they mined for iron ore many years before and wagoned it to Massanutten for to be fired. Then , at the Harshberger Farm above Luray, they opened saltpeter mines during war time when it was needed as base to make gunpowder. It may well have been that in a small mine of this nature that Solurzs could have found his silver. The tunnels were dug under the mountain sides and, even today, you can still see the mark of spades having cut intxothe stubborn soil.There were numerous small saltpeter mines in the area.
Exacty where our's silver came from no one ever knew, but lots of people still think it is somewhere down there waiting to be re-dug. There's been a lot of talk.
I remember adding to the tale myself. I've always wondered what kind of a person this Scotty might have been. He must have been a sentimentl person, from what I have heard, and I think he would have been sensible enough to have marked that slee of rock he blasted over the mine entrance in some way so that he could find it after the War had ended.
This is a "factual" story - one I have come across several times - and I have a strong feeling the story teller's "twist" has yet to be played out. I know of only two places where you patches of wild shamrock-like plants. One is around limestone foundation slabs of an old cabin that used be there on the hill above town. The other is above and below a small rock slee less than a mile up the moutainside. Sours was said to be a Scot but I have found, from personal experience in both Scotland and Ireland, that both the Scots and the Irish play bagpies. A Scotch-Irishman would like Shamrocks.
What better way would here have been to mark a site for rediscovery after the war?
A.L.M. April 8, 2003 [c633wds]
