William Henry Schmidt (1871-1954) was a prospector who mined this area in the early 1900's. He was known locally as Burro Schmidt because burros were his only companions. He reasoned that if he ever did strike the Mother Load, he would need a better way to transport his ore out of the El Paso Mountains. So in 1906 he began digging this tunnel through the mountain to a point that overlooked the Fremont Valley, which was perhaps 2000 feet below. (I don't know how he planned to get ore down the mountain, once he passed through it.) As years passed his work lost its original purpose and became an obsession. In 1936, after tunneling 2,087 feet entirely by hand, he finally reached daylight on the other side. It's amazing that Schmidt lived another 16 years after completing his project. There's no record of him ever finding much gold.