Potosi Mountain is approximately 30 miles (50 km) southwest of Las Vegas in the Spring MountainsofClark County, southern Nevada, United States. It is also called Double Up Mountain and Olcott Peak.[3] Its main bedrock is limestone.[4]
The giant cave of Potosi Mountain was used for vision quests by the Chemehuevi shaman of the mid-19th century.[5]
Spanish missionaries may have opened silver mines here, but there is no good documentation of that. In 1855, Mormon settlers found rich lead and other metal ore. The Mormon mine manager probably named the mine after his childhood home, Potosi, Wisconsin, another mining town, itself named (directly or indirectly) after the Bolivian mountain Cerro Potosí, the richest silver mine known.[6]
Potosi Mountain serves as a major FM broadcast transmitter site for Las Vegas, with 7 full power FM stations transmitting from the top of Potosi, along with 1 FM Translator.[9] The stations are KNPR 88.9, KCNV 89.7, KOMP 92.3, KYMT 93.1, and KXPT 97.1 all licensed to Las Vegas, KVPH 104.3 licensed to North Las Vegas, and KXTE 107.5, licensed to Pahrump, Nevada.
A translator, K276BL, also operates from up here on 103.1, simulcasting KSOS 90.5 from Las Vegas. KXTE was the first tenant to broadcast from the top of the mountain and the first station in the United States to transmit in HD Digital.[10]
There is also an amateur television repeater, with the call sign N7ZEV, located here.[11]
Along with FM transmitters, NOAA All Hazards Radio station WNG634 on 162.400 MHz, which is managed by the NWS Office in Las Vegas, NV, is located here as well.[12]
^Carobeth Laird, The Chemehuevis, Malki Museum Press, 1976.
^Elizabeth Harrington, "Yesterday: Potosi Mine", Nevada Magazine, Summer 1968, full text
^David White, Marius Robinson Campbell, Contributions to Economic Geology, "Part I: Metals and Nonmetals except Fuels: 1912", United States Geological Survey, 1914.
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