The Carissa Mine was built in the early 1870s and was later abandoned in 1907 when it's final gold deposits ran out. In it's time, it boasted the impressive record of supplying South Pass City with a viable economy which leant it the status of being the most populated town in Wyoming in the latter half of the 19th century. After the desertation of South Pass in the early 1900s, the mine laid in ruins as though miners simply stopped and left.

While restoration of South Pass city has been an ongoing project since the 1960s, the Mine laid relativly untouched. It wasn't until in very recent history, when Wyoming's Department of Environmental Quality and it's Abandoned Mine Land Program considered reclaiming it as a public historical monument.

G.M. Stewart Corp. was contracted to under-take the monumental task of transforming a dilapidated mine into a crowning spectacle that has become synonymous with South Pass City and it's legacy.