1887 The mines closeBane zatvárajú

In 1887 the mines of Nová Baňa were closed as unprofitable, five and a half centuries after the first miners came over the hills. Gold was still in the rock, but not enough of it to pay wages, pumps and pit timber at nineteenth-century prices, when metal could be bought on a world market. Mining towns that lose their mines usually lose their people too — and these were the decades when Slovaks were leaving for America in their hundreds of thousands. What was left here was the forest, the orchards on the warm slopes, and the memory.V roku 1887 zatvorili novobanské bane ako nerentabilné, päť a pol storočia po tom, čo sem cez kopce prišli prví baníci. Zlato v skale ešte bolo, no nie natoľko, aby zaplatilo mzdy, čerpadlá a výdrevu za ceny devätnásteho storočia, keď sa kov dal kúpiť na svetovom trhu. Banské mestá, ktoré prídu o bane, obyčajne prídu aj o ľudí — a boli to práve desaťročia, keď Slováci odchádzali po stotisícoch do Ameriky. Zostal les, sady na teplých svahoch a pamäť.