|
[Date and place of writing not
given. Published in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, January 15, 1879.
Editor]
NEVADA is one of the very
youngest and wildest of the States; nevertheless it is already strewn with
ruins that seem as gray and silent and time-worn as if the civilization to
which they belonged had perished centuries ago. Yet, strange to say, all
these ruins are results of mining efforts made within the last few years.
Wander where you may throughout the length and breadth of this mountain-
barred wilderness, you everywhere come upon these dead mining towns, with
their tall chimney-stacks, standing forlorn amid broken walls and furnaces,
and machinery half buried in sand, the very names of many of them already
forgotten amid the excitements of later discoveries, and now known only
through tradition - tradition ten years old.
While exploring the
mountain-ranges of the State during a considerable portion of three summers,
I think that I have seen at least five of these deserted towns and villages
for every one in ordinary life. Some of them were probably only camps built
by bands of prospectors, and inhabited for a few months or years, while some
specially interesting caņon was being explored, and then carelessly
abandoned for more promising fields. But many were real towns, regularly
laid out and incorporated, containing well-built hotels, churches,
school-houses, post-offices, and jails, as well as the mills on which they
all depended; and whose well-graded streets were filled with lawyers,
doctors, brokers, hangmen, real-estate agents, etc., the whole population
numbering several thousand.
A few years ago the
population of Hamilton is said to have been nearly eight thousand; that of
Treasure Hill, six thousand; of Shermantown, seven thousand; of Swansea,
three thousand. All of these were incorporated towns with mayors, councils,
fire departments, and daily newspapers. Hamilton has now about one hundred
inhabitants, most of whom are merely waiting in dreary inaction for
something to turn up. Treasure Hill has about half as many, Shermantown one
family, and Swansea none, while on the other hand the graveyards are far too
full.
In one caņon of the Toyabe
range, near Austin, I found no less than five dead towns without a single
inhabitant. The streets and blocks of "real estate" graded on the hillsides
are rapidly falling back into the wilderness. Sage-brushes are growing up
around the forges of the blacksmith shops, and lizards bask on the crumbling
walls.
While traveling southward
from Austin down Big Smoky Valley, I noticed a remarkably tall and imposing
column, rising like a lone pine out of the sage-brush on the edge of a dry
gulch. This proved to be a smokestack of solid masonry. It seemed strangely
out of place in the desert, as if it had been transported entire from the
heart of some noisy manufacturing town and left here by mistake. I learned
afterwards that it belonged to a set of furnaces that were built by a New
York company to smelt ore that never was found. The tools of the workmen are
still lying in place beside the furnaces, as if dropped in some sudden
Indian or earthquake panic and never afterwards handled. These imposing
ruins, together with the desolate town, lying a quarter of a mile to the
northward, present a most vivid picture of wasted effort. Coyotes now wander
unmolested through the brushy streets, and of all the busy throng that so
lavishly spent their time and money here only one man remains - a lone
bachelor with one suspender.
Mining discoveries and
progress, retrogression and decay, seem to have been crowded more closely
against each other here than on any other portion of the globe. Some one of
the band of adventurous prospectors who came from the exhausted placers of
California would discover some rich ore - how much or little mattered not at
first. These specimens fell among excited seekers after wealth like sparks
in gunpowder, and in a few days the wilderness was disturbed with the noisy
clang of miners and builders. A little town would then spring up, and before
anything like a careful survey of any particular lode would be made, a
company would be formed, and expensive mills built. Then, after all the
machinery was ready for the ore, perhaps little, or none at all, was to be
found. Meanwhile another discovery was reported, and the young town was
abandoned as completely as a camp made for a single night; and soon, until
some really valuable lode was found, such as those of Eureka, Austin,
Virginia, etc., which formed the substantial groundwork for a thousand other
excitements.
Passing through the dead town
of Schellbourne last month, I asked one of the few lingering inhabitants why
the town was built. "For the mines," he replied. "And where are the mines?"
"On the mountains back here." "And why were they abandoned?" I asked. "Are
they exhausted?" "Oh, no," he replied, "they are not exhausted; on the
contrary, they have never been worked at all, for unfortunately, just as we
were about ready to open them, the Cherry Creek mines were discovered across
the valley in the Egan range, and everybody rushed off there, taking what
they could with them - houses, machinery, and all. But we are hoping that
somebody with money and speculation will come and revive us yet."
The dead mining excitements
of Nevada were far more intense and destructive in their action than those
of California, because the prizes at stake were greater, while more skill
was required to gain them. The long trains of gold-seekers making their way
to California had ample time and means to recover from their first attacks
of mining fever while crawling laboriously across the plains, and on their
arrival on any portion of the Sierra gold belt, they at once began to make
money. No matter in what gulch or caņon they worked, some measure of success
was sure, however unskillful they might be. And though while making ten
dollars a day they might be agitated by hopes of making twenty, or of
striking their picks against hundred- or thousand-dollar nuggets, men of
ordinary nerve could still work on with comparative steadiness, and remain
rational.
But in the case of the Nevada
miner, he too often spent himself in years of weary search without gaining a
dollar, traveling hundreds of miles from mountain to mountain, burdened with
wasting hopes of discovering some hidden vein worth millions, enduring
hardships of the most destructive kind, driving innumerable tunnels into the
hillsides, while his assayed specimens again and again proved worthless.
Perhaps one in a hundred of these brave prospectors would "strike it rich,"
while ninety-nine died alone in the mountains or sank out of sight in the
corners of saloons, in a haze of whiskey and tobacco smoke.
The healthful ministry of
wealth is blessed; and surely it is a fine thing that so many are eager to
find the gold and silver that lie hid in the veins of the mountains. But in
the search the seekers too often become insane, and strike about blindly in
the dark like raving madmen. Seven hundred and fifty tons of ore from the
original Eberhardt mine on Treasure Hill yielded a million and a half
dollars, the whole of this immense sum having been obtained within two
hundred and fifty feet of the surface, the greater portion within one
hundred and forty feet. Other ore-masses were scarcely less marvelously
rich, giving rise to one of the most violent excitements that ever occurred
in the history of mining. All kinds of people - shoemakers, tailors,
farmers, etc., as well as miners -left their own right work and fell in a
perfect storm of energy upon the White Pine Hills, covering the ground like
grasshoppers, and seeming determined by the very violence of their efforts
to turn every stone to silver. But with few exceptions, these mining storms
pass away about as suddenly as they rise, leaving only ruins to tell of the
tremendous energy expended, as heaps of giant boulders in the valley tell of
the spent power of the mountain floods.
In marked contrast with this
destructive unrest is the orderly deliberation into which miners settle in
developing a truly valuable mine. At Eureka we were kindly led through the
treasure chambers of the Richmond and Eureka Consolidated, our guides
leisurely leading the way from level to level, calling attention to the
precious ore-masses which the workmen were slowly breaking to pieces with
their picks, like navvies wearing away the day in a railroad cutting; while
down at the smelting works the bars of bullion were handled with less eager
haste than the farmer shows in gathering his sheaves.
The wealth Nevada has already
given to the world is indeed wonderful, but the only grand marvel is the
energy expended in its development. The amount of prospecting done in the
face of so many dangers and sacrifices, the innumerable tunnels and shafts
bored into the mountains, the mills that have been built - these would seem
to require a race of giants. But, in full view of the substantial results
achieved, the pure waste manifest in the ruins one meets never fails to
produce a saddening effect.
The dim old ruins of Europe,
so eagerly sought after by travelers, have something pleasing about them,
whatever their historical associations; for they at least lend some beauty
to the landscape. Their picturesque towers and arches seem to be kindly
adopted by nature, and planted with wild flowers and wreathed with ivy;
while their rugged angles are soothed and freshened and embossed with green
mosses, fresh life and decay mingling in pleasing measures, and the whole
vanishing softly like a ripe, tranquil day fading into night. So, also,
among the older ruins of the East there is a fitness felt. They have served
their time, and like the weather-beaten mountains are wasting harmoniously.
The same is in some degree true of the dead mining towns of California.
But those lying to the
eastward of the Sierra throughout the ranges of the Great Basin waste in the
dry wilderness like the bones of cattle that have died of thirst. Many of
them do not represent any good accomplishment, and have no right to be. They
are monuments of fraud and ignorance - sins against science. The drifts and
tunnels in the rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the
prospector, offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but, like prayers
of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered. But, after all,
effort, however misapplied, is better than stagnation. Better toil blindly,
beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or
not, than lie down in apathetic decay.
The fever period is
fortunately passing away. The prospector is no longer the raving, wandering
ghoul of ten years ago, rushing in random lawlessness among the hills,
hungry and footsore; but cool and skillful, well supplied with every
necessary, and clad in his right mind. Capitalists, too, and the public in
general, have become wiser, and do not take fire so readily from mining
sparks; while at the same time a vast amount of real work is being done, and
the ratio between growth and decay is constantly becoming better. |
