Silver Mine Pass was named for a silver mine opened near the pass by Spaniards in the 1700s or earlier. The ore was inferior and the mine was abandoned, but 14 shafts, some of them interconnecting, remain. Near the mine are remnants of a fortification made by 30 men under the leadership of James Bowie, later a hero of the Siege to the Alamo in 1836. In 1831, while Bowie’s men were at work at this mine, they repulsed a Comanche attack in a fierce, all-day battle. The hero of the fight was Bowie’s slave, "Black Jim Bowie," who risked his life by leaving the fortification to bring water to the besieged.