SCHWEIZER VEIN (ELIÁŠ VALLEY)
The Schweizer Vein forms an exceptional historical mining landscape in the Eliáš Valley, with a continuous belt about 2.5 km long containing more than a hundred spoil heaps and funnel-shaped collapses marking former shafts.
After the Geschieber (Cow) Vein, it was the second richest silver-bearing vein in Jáchymov. By 1589 roughly thirty tonnes of silver had been extracted. The vein belonged to the St Merten mining guild in the valley.
Discovered in 1526, it was named after the Rhineland mining entrepreneur Georg Schweizer. Near today’s Nové Město on the road to Mariánská, the vein reached the surface. Georg Agricola recorded silver lumps weighing up to about one hundred kilograms, while Johann Mathesius described native silver wires “as thick as a quill and half an ell long”. Both sources note that silver could be mined almost directly in the upper sections down to roughly 80–100 m, while the vein itself descends to around 300 m.
In the Jáchymov district, mines were typically divided into 128 shares (kuxe), each valued at about 1,000 thalers. The Schweizer Vein apparently produced the highest profit per share in the region: Schweizer himself earned about 40,000 guilders, and the mine owner Merten Heidler as much as 100,000 guilders in net profit.
Besides silver, the vein also contained uranium minerals. After uranium-colour production began around 1840, uranium was first obtained from local spoil heaps, which were therefore reworked from 1843 onward. During the period of intensive uranium mining in the 20th century, the Schweizer Vein again became one of the richest deposits in the Jáchymov area.
Today the site remains a unique preserved mining landscape documenting centuries of extraction.
