Spuce Mountain is a mountain in Elko County

Elko County, Nevada

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 45,291 people, 15,638 households, and 11,493 families residing in the county. The population density was 3/sq mi . There were 18,456 housing units at an average density of 1/sq mi...

, in the northeastern section of the state of Nevada

Nevada

Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...

 in the Great Basin

Great Basin

The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America and is noted for its arid conditions and Basin and Range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than away at the...

 region of the western United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The summit is at 10267 feet (3,129.4 m).

Copper, silver, and lead were mined on Spruce Mountain, which gave its name to the settlement of Spruce (sometimes called Sprucemont on maps) which existed from 1868 through about 1900 and is now a ghost town

Ghost town

A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...

. Electronics researcher Ralph Hartley

Ralph Hartley

Ralph Vinton Lyon Hartley was an electronics researcher. He invented the Hartley oscillator and the Hartley transform, and contributed to the foundations of information theory.-Biography:...

was born at Spruce in 1888.