Gold Hill, Nevada

“ The state was separated from Utah in 1861, and admitted as a state in 1864. The first white men to visit it were the Franciscan friars in 1775. In 1825 Peter Ogden of the Hudson Bay Company came to Humboldt River, Fremont went through the state in 1843–5, and in 1849 a trading-post was established on the Carson River by the Mormons. The principal cities are Carson City, the capital (Pop. 2,466) , Virginia City, Reno, Gold Hill, Goldfield, Rawhide and Toriopah. About 5,216 Indians are still on the reservations in the state. Nevada has about 1,000 miles of railroad. ”

“ In Reese River Valley, six thousand feet, it begins near the end of August. Winter grain ripens somewhat earlier, while occasionally one meets a patch of barley in some cool, high-lying canyon that will not mature before the middle of September.
Unlike California, Nevada will probably be always richer in gold and silver than in grain. Utah farmers hope to change the climate of the east side of the basin by prayer, and point to the recent rise in the waters of the Great Salt Lake as a beginning of moister times. ”

“ Arrived at Nevada City, with its steep streets, compactly built up at the centre of the town, church and county court-house on the hillside, the traveler finds himself fairly out of the mountains, the luring fatal mountains, whose very soil has now the color of gold and now the color of blood. ”

“ Among the manufactures of the township are carriages and products of planing mills, foundries and machine shops; and grapes and fruits are raised in the surrounding country. Gold was first discovered within what is now Nevada City, on Deer Creek, in the summer of 1848, by James W. Marshall, who, in January of the same year, had found the metal near what is now Coloma, Eldorado county. The first settlement was made here in 1849; rich deposits of gold were soon afterwards found on or near the surface, and the settlement had the characteristic growth of a western mining town ”

“ The town of Gold Hill is well supplied with churches and schools, societies of all kinds, fire apparatus, and all else that should be found in a place of its population and business. What has been said of Virginia City in regard to these matters, will apply equally well to Gold Hill. The town has one daily paper, the Evening News, contains the works of many of the leading mines of the Comstock, and is a lively, bustling business place—is full of the thunder of machinery and the shriek of steam-whistles. ”

“ It is a popular health and summer resort, being esteemed for its equable climate and for its fine site, at an elevation of 2500 feet in a mountainous region. There are valuable gold mines near by, which supply the city's quartz mills. The leading occupations are mining, the cultivation of fruit and vines, and wine-making. ”

“ But it was a desert outpost then, a catch-all for the human drift which every whirlwind of discovery sweeps along. Gold and silver hunting and mine speculations were the industries—gambling, drinking, and murder were the diversions—of the Nevada capital. Politics developed in due course, though whether as a business or a diversion is not clear at this time.
The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, a New York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers.— [The Mrs. O'Flannigan of 'Roughing It'.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ To these sunset shores came the pick of the world’s adventurous youth.
Nevada absorbed the best and the worst of California’s seasoned veterans. Gay, reckless, debonair, the gold-seekers went their turbulent way. Every man was a law to himself, carried in his holster the redress for wrongs. The wildest excesses prevailed. The most brutal crimes went unpunished. For years there was no night at Virginia, at Austin, or at Eureka. The flare from dance halls, hurdy-gurdys, and gambling houses flung splashes of light on masses of roughly dressed men engaged in continual revelry. ”

“ Through San Jose, too, came those of the gold-seekers, bound for the high Sierras on the border of the desert, who had not taken the Sacramento River route and had decided to brave instead the dangers of the trail through the fertile San Joaquin, up to the Feather River and thus into the diggings about Virginia City. Gold had been found by that time in Nevada and hundreds of intrepid men were facing the awful Mojave and Nevada deserts, blazing hot in day-time and icy cold at night, to seek the new Eldorados. ”

“ The fairest structures in San Francisco were built of the treasures taken from Nevada hills; clear across the continent, in every great city are beautiful blocks which are but Nevada gold and silver converted into stone and iron and glass; in every State are fair homes which were bought or redeemed with the money obtained here in the desert. Beyond that, the money already supplied from Nevada mines has changed the calculations of commerce, and made itself a ruling factor in prices; it has given our nation a new standing among the nations of the world ”

“ With the apparent exhaustion of the Comstock lode, the industry decreased considerably. The output of silver continued to decrease until 1899, when the product was valued at $1,090,457. Gold, however, revived during the last decade, the output for 1899 being valued at $2,219,000—more than double that of 1893. Copper, lead, and iron ore are also mined. No coal has been mined since 1894. The rich mineral resources of the State afford a valuable field for future development.
Agriculture. Agriculture is less developed in Nevada than in any other State. ”

“ Piodie was the newest camp in Nevada. Discovery of ore had just been made and a stampede for the new diggings was on. They were said to be very rich in both gold and silver. If this proved true, the handling of freight to the new camp would be profitable.
“You go, Hugh. I don’t want to leave Mollie just now.”
In the mining country camps have their little day and cease to be. They wallow in prosperity and never dream of the time when the coyote will howl in their lonesome streets. A camp which “comes back” is as rare as a pugilist who recovers a lost championship. Aurora’s star had set. ”

“ They would have believed his story to be but the wild speech of his wandering mind, had they not found in his tangled hair, mingled with dirt and blood, flakes of gold.
Vermont. Poor old chap.
Silas. With a gold-mine in his hair. Rich old beggar.
Tom. Nevada is no beggar; though no cabin is shut against him, no miner's friendly hand withheld. He will neither eat nor sleep until he has earned both food and shelter. For a willing mate in an ugly tunnel, with a steady grip and a strong arm, give me Nevada.
Nevada (outside) . Who calls Nevada? (Dashes down run, and stands C.; music pianissimo.) ”

“ Though tempted to pass the night in Grass Valley, impelled by curiosity, we pushed on four miles farther, to Nevada City. It is useless to attempt to convey in words the fascination of Nevada City. My friend, who is familiar with the country, said it reminded him of Italy. Houses rise one above the other on the hillside; while down below, the winding streets with their quaint old-time stores and balconied windows, are equally attractive. The horrors of the previous night at Colfax made the quiet peacefulness of Nevada City the more refreshing. ”

“ Gold Hill itself has swelled into the proportions of a city. It is now practically a continuation of Virginia. Here the evidences of busy enterprise are peculiarly striking. The whole hill is riddled and honey-combed with shafts and tunnels. Engine-houses for hoisting are perched on points apparently inaccessible; quartz-mills of various capacities [216] line the sides of the cañon; the main street is well flanked by brick stores, hotels, express-offices, saloons, restaurants, groggeries, and all those attractive places of resort which go to make up a flourishing mining town. ”

“ Minerals.—To its mineral wealth Nevada owes its existence as a state; but for the richness of its veins of gold and silver ore it would be still little more than an arid waste. Extending from central California S.E. along the dividing line between that state and
Nevada, and thence past the Colorado river into Arizona, is one of the richest mineral belts in the world. ”

“ At Reno is the Nevada State University, and as this is a silver region there are extensive smelting mills. Thirty-one miles southward is Carson, the capital of Nevada, and twenty-one miles farther the famous silver-mining town of Virginia City, with ten thousand people, built half-way up a steep mountain slope and completely surrounded by mountains. ”

“ The town is of course named for the hill. In pio neer days the main settlement in this neighborhood was that of W. G. T'Vault at Datrdanelles, now Rock Point, about two miles west of the Gold Hill of today.
GOLD RAY, Jackson County. Colonel Frank Ray of New York was interested in the power development at the falls of Rogue River at Lower Table Rock, and named the place Gold Ray. This name caused confusion on the line of the Southern Pacific Company, be cause of the close proximity of Gold Hill, the next station to the
west. The railroad name for Gold Ray is Ray Gold. ”

“ The spirit of rivalry between Grass Valley and Nevada City has been accentuated, of late, by the efforts of the former town to secure the honor of being the county seat, on the claim that it possesses nearly double the population of Nevada City. Politics serve to intensify the feeling; Grass Valley, which contains many people of Southern birth, being largely Democratic in its affiliations, whilst Nevada City is as strongly, and, one may add, as conservatively, Republican. ”

“ He was to conduct them by a trail, unmarked as yet by any wagon track, over which some of his people had traveled to the old Spanish 6 grant recently acquired by their church at San Bernardino. This route to the gold-fields followed the Colorado watershed southward taking advantage of such few streams as flowed into the basin, to turn northward again at the pueblo of Los Angeles. Thus it described a great loop nearly parallel with what is now Nevada’s southern boundary. ”

“ A large car, driven by strangers in the land, means hunters, prospectors from the outside brought in by some special tale of hidden wealth,—or just plain simpletons who only want to see what lies over the mountain. There aren't many of the last-named variety up in the Nevada wastes. Even your nature-loving rovers oddly keep pretty much to the beaten trails of other nature lovers, where gas stations and new tires may be found at regular intervals. The Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, the National Old Trails they explore,—but not the high, wind-swept mesas of Nevada's barren land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Congress knew, as did the whole country, that Nevada was possessed of great mineral wealth, and that lands containing it should be disposed of differently from those fit only for agriculture. No method for doing this had then been provided; but Congress said to the people of the Territory, 'You shall, if you decide to come into the Union, have for the use of schools sections numbered 16 and 36 in every township, if on survey no one else has any valid claim to them ”

“ No State nor Territory will derive such inestimable advantage from the road as the Territory of Nevada. Situated, as we are, in what, during a great portion of the year, is an almost inaccessible isolation of wealth; with mountains covered with perpetual snow frowning down directly upon us at the west, and with a series of ranges, difficult to cross, at the east of us, with a wilderness fit only for the original inhabitants of the waste, stretching away a thousand miles, and intervening between us and the frontier of agricultural enterprise ”

“ It isn't far from Virginia City and is the capital of Nevada. It contains a few thousand people, lots of tall poplar trees which stand along the streets, sage-brush and alkali covered hills and plains, a large stone railroad roundhouse, the State Capitol building (which is enclosed in a park several acres in extent) , a U. S. mint and that's about all. No work to speak of is going on around there and as Billy and me could not get anything to do we lived on hand-outs mostly. ”

“ Men kept pouring into Nevada from all quarters, starved out of their own camps, and all bearing the same tale of starvation and distress, and glad to get to a place where food was to be had. The town, being a sort of harbor of refuge for miners in remote diggings, became very full; and as no work could be done in such weather, the population had nothing to do but to amuse themselves the best way they could. A theatrical company was performing nightly to crowded houses; the gambling saloons were kept in full blast ”

“ 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. ”