Sacramento Valley and Eastern Railway

Although stated to be a common carrier, the SV&E was solely dependent on the success of the mine and smelter at Bully Hill, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) above the railroad’s easternmost terminus.

In July 1899, a colorful New York financier, Captain Joseph Raphael De Lamar, purchased the Bully Hill mines for about $200,000 and set about building a smelter of 400 ton capacity and developing the area for copper.

In 1901 DeLamar built an electrolytic refinery in Chrome, New Jersey to handle the product of the Bully Hill smelter in the form of flat ingots of blister copper.

The open roasting of the ores prior to smelting, necessary because of the high sulfur content, released clouds of smoke and toxic fumes, which had disastrous effects on any plant life that came in contact with it.

Meanwhile, the SV&E continued providing a service with a "skunk" gasoline motor car being used in later years to carry passengers, mail and express from Pitt out to the SP line.

In 1917, Walter Arnstein, president of the Oakland and Antioch Railroad, and owner of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge, secured a long-term lease and the mining of copper and zinc resumed.