Harry Pye (died 1879) was a prospector and sometime mule skinner in New Mexico Territory who discovered silver chloride in the Black Range in 1879 initiating a multimillion-dollar silver rush.[1][2]
Born in England, he first went to Australia where he was unsuccessful, then he came to the American Southwest. Pye was working as a teamster hauling goods for the U.S. Army when he recognized the greyish mineral weathering out of the rock in a remote canyon as silver chloride or chlorargyrite.[1][2][3] He finished his contract, filed a claim and started mining, only to be killed a few months later by the Mimbres Apache.[1][2][4] But his mine continued under new management and the town of Chloride, New Mexico was founded in the canyon.[1][5]