Ruby, Washington — Mining Camp That Left Its Name Behind

Ruby came out of the mining excitement that sent prospectors into the mountains of northeastern Washington.

Claims created camps wherever ore, water and transportation made even temporary settlement worthwhile. Ruby was one of those places.

The mining activity did not produce a durable large town. Workers moved on, buildings disappeared and the physical settlement thinned dramatically.

The name proved harder to remove.

Ruby remained attached to the locality and surrounding geography after the boom had lost its reason for being.

Mining left plenty of shafts and roads across the Northwest. It also left a second kind of infrastructure: names that stayed on the map after almost everything that created them was gone.