Galena, Illinois for mayor and aldermen on May 24, 1841, replacing the board of trustees; Charles S. Hempstead was elected the first mayor with 185 of the 356 votes cast. The first census was also held that year, finding 1,900 inhabitants. By 1845 Galena was producing nearly 27,000 tons of lead ore and Jo Daviess County was producing 80 percent of the lead in the United States. Once one of the most important cities in the state, Galena was a hub on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and St. Paul. Due to erosion, the Galena River is now inaccessible to steamboats.
Ore Mountains mining in the southern forelands of the Ore Mountains. Europe's largest deposits of lithium-bearing mica zinnwaldite in Cínovec, a Czech village between town of Dubí and the border with Germany which gave its old German name Zinnwald to the mineral, are expected to be mined starting 2019 (as of June 2017). When several Ore Mountain passes were upgraded into "chaussees" in the 19th century, and the Upper Ore Mountains were accessed by the railway, tourism began to develop. One of the early promoters of tourism in the Ore Mountains was Otto Delitsch. In 1907, a memorial was erected to him