One of the reasons I enjoy visiting those old ghost town is to see the amazing things they did in an era of mules and wagons -- or maybe Model Ts and donkey engines. Tram wheels and stamp mills that weigh many tons were hauled up into the most improbable places. To see them out there now makes you shake your head in disbelief.
It's no wonder the little cemeteries in those old ghost towns -- when there are legible headstones -- are often filled with men in their 40s and 50s. It was very tough out there. (For the few women, it often appears to have been childbirth that did them in.)
These little mining towns were usually wretched places, windswept, exposed, freezing cold in winter and hot in the summer. Water was scarce. Food had to be hauled in for miles, usually in cans, many of which had lead seams. Every stick of wood would be cut from the hillsides for miles around to fuel the furnaces that powered the mines -- not to mention heating shacks and dugouts.
There are many reasons why so many mines were short-lived, but a lot had to do with the combination of limited exploratory capabilities (no core samples from deep underground) and unregulated securities markets.
Mark Twain was in Nevada in the 1860s (his mother sent him west to live with his brother in Carson City to avoid being drafted into the Civil War), and he defined a mine as a hole in the ground with a liar standing in front of it. He writes about people being filthy rich with mining stock certificates one day, and using them a few days later to kindle fires in their stoves.
Today, the combination of great exploratory capabilities (and costs), highly regulated securities markets, and environmental regulations makes it almost impossible for small operators to raise the capital needed to finance a modern mine operation, so it is mostly the business of big corporations and their contractors and subcontractors. The 1980s-90s was the last mini boom that involved some smallish operators, and their abandoned pits can be seen all over Nevada.
And today, when a mine is up and running, the work is done by a handful of people in great machines who often don't even live near the mines or move their families to the area.