From the mid-1800s through the early 20th century, the assay office was a critical hub in mining camps across the American West. It was here that assayers, or chemists, tested ore to determine the quantity and purity of precious metals like gold and silver, information that could make or break a mining operation.
That history is now on display at the Bullion Plaza Cultural Center & Museum in Miami, where one of the museum’s newest exhibits recreates an assay office as it might have appeared in the 1920s. Unveiled several weeks ago during Tom Foster Day, the exhibit is so meticulously arranged that it could be largely functional if an assayer ever wanted to put it to use.
The exhibit houses hundreds of assaying tools and instruments dating from the late 1800s to the 1920s. Bullion Plaza Executive Director Phil Stewart estimates there are between 600 and 800 individual pieces in the collection, a conservative count given the sheer volume of artifacts.
Despite their age, the equipment is in remarkable condition.
“The precision balances look like they’re practically brand new,” Stewart says.
The exhibit feels less like a display and more like a moment frozen in time, he says.
“It’s such a unique time capsule,” he says. “It looks like somebody in 1928 shut the door and, in 2026, just opened it up.”
The assay office comes from the private collection of Bob Werner of Pioche, Nevada. A geologist and plant manager for several companies, Werner was also a devoted student of history and geology. Over decades, he amassed extensive collections of minerals, fossils, and mining artifacts, sourcing pieces from the likes of antique stores, private sellers, eBay and auction houses.
The assay office was one of Werner’s carefully curated collections. He built a shop at his home and arranged the equipment to resemble an early 1900s assay office, using his deep knowledge of mining history to place each item where it would have belonged.
Werner owned hundreds, even thousands, of books on mining and minerals, says his stepson, Stan Taylor. Using that knowledge, Werner had recreated an assay office layout with striking accuracy.
“It’s like walking back in time because everything was in the right spot,” Taylor says. “Everything together made it incredible.”
After Werner’s death in 2023, his family faced the question of what to do with the collection.
“I’d venture to say for the last 60 years, he collected and put stuff together,” Taylor says. “We didn’t want to just part it out and have it disappear. Instead of trying to sell it, we just wanted to find a home for it.”
Through an acquaintance in Colorado who had purchased other mining artifacts from the family, word spread to museums that the assay office collection was available for donation. Bullion Plaza was among those contacted, and the connection quickly took shape.
Stewart and several museum volunteers traveled to Nevada last summer to retrieve the collection, filling a U-Haul truck with the boxed collection before transporting everything back to Miami. Once the artifacts arrived at Bullion Plaza, volunteers spent roughly four months carefully assembling the exhibit.
To guide their work, they relied on photographs provided by Werner’s family that showed how the assay office had been arranged in his shop.
“That was all we had to go by,” Stewart says.
With the exception of the main oven, Taylor says the setup could have been made operational.
“I think he used propane, but he could actually make it work,” Taylor says. “He could actually run the tests.”
Now, thanks to Werner’s lifelong passion for collecting and preserving mining history, and the efforts of Bullion Plaza staff and volunteers, visitors can step into that moment in time as well, experiencing an assay office much as it would have appeared in the early 1900s.
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