Goldfield, Nevada

“ It crosses a section that is mostly desert, but is connected with the Bullfrog District by the Las Vegas & Tonopah, which runs from Goldfieid through Beatty and Rhyolite, and meets the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake at Las Vegas. The Goldfield and Bullfrog districts have a further outlet to the south through a second railway, the Nevada Short Line (Bullfrog-Goldfield and Tonopah & Tidewater railways) which connects with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé at Ludlow in California.
Population.—Nevada is the most sparsely settled state of the Union. Its population in 1860 was 6857 ”

“ I selected Reno as a central point for residence and decided to locate there. Eastern stock markets appeared to be beyond my ken. It seemed quite apparent that the Western game, as compared with the Eastern, was one of marbles as against millions. In New York's financial mart I felt like a minnow in a sea of bass. Without millions for capital, Nevada appealed to me as a more likely field of usefulness. I believed in Nevada's mineral resources. Having seen Goldfield evolve from a tented station on the desert with a hundred people into a city of 15,000 inhabitants ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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'.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ And he, cosily content, knows her as his loving slave, no more rebellious, happy to serve.
But in Nevada, nature is still unconquered, savage and supreme. It is the primordial world, with man a shivering stranger amid its grim aloofness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray, drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Goldfield, but recently a desert, is a city of ten thousand people with good hotels, banks, daily papers, water, electric and gas plants, railroad, telegraph and telephone service, and indeed all the utilities of a modern city. Tonopah is of like history with somewhat smaller population. Here are all the cosmopolitan and adventurous spirits that are lured by gold, making these camps on the human side picturesque beyond measure. Marvelous are the stories, the true ones perhaps most so of all. ”

“ With rich mine markets and salubrious climate, the Nevada farmer can make more money by loose, ragged methods than the same class of farmers in any other State I have yet seen, while the almost savage isolation in which they live seems grateful to them. Even in those cases where the advent of neighbors brings no disputes concerning water rights and ranges, they seem to prefer solitude, most of them having been elected from adventurers from California--the pioneers of pioneers. ”

“ Though Nevada is situated in what is called the "Great Basin," no less than sixty-five groups and chains of mountains rise within the bounds of the State to a height of about from eight thousand to thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and as far as I have observed, every one of these is planted, to some extent, with coniferous trees, though it is only upon the highest that we find anything that may fairly be called a forest. ”

“ The Water Ouzel. [Harriet Monroe]
Little brown surf-bather of the mountains!
Spirit of foam, lover of cataracts, shaking your wings in falling waters!
Have you no fear of the roar and rush when Nevada plunges —
Nevada, the shapely dancer, feeling her way with slim white fingers?
How dare you dash at Yosemite the mighty —
Tall, white limbed Yosemite, leaping down, down over the cliff?
Is it not enough to lean on the blue air of mountains?
Is it not enough to rest with your mate at timberline, in bushes that hug
the rocks? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Mountain Nevada, near the City De los Angelos, deserves no small admiration; for it begins at thirty Leagues end to rise exceeding high, and being flat on the top, hath a wide gaping Mouth, whose bottom is fathomless; from which at Sun-rising and setting rises a Smoak up directly towards the Skie, but immediately after spreading like a Plume of Feathers, it is dispers’d by the Wind, and no more seen till it appears in a dusky Cloud. ”

“ The manufacturing establishments are chiefly of a domestic nature, producing and repairing articles for local consumption. Car repair shops and flour and grist milling employ the greatest capital. The total capital of all manufacturing industries is less than $1,500,000.
Transportation. There has been little inducement to railroad construction in Nevada. For several years the mileage has been about 920 miles. In proportion to the area of the State the mileage is less than that of any other State. The principal line is the Southern Pacific, running from east to west through the State. ”

“ But California, the land of promise, was their goal. With the western sun in their eyes they looked at the mountain wall and spoke of the Eldorado beyond where the gold lay yellow in the sluice box, and flecked with glittering flakes the prospector’s pan.
That was in forty-nine. Ten years later they were hurrying backward over the mountains to the streams that drain Mount Davidson. Nevada had its wealth too, a hidden, rock-ribbed wealth, jealously buried. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevada (46) , one of the western States of the American Union, occupying a wide stretch of territory on the Great Plateau or Basin, between the Rocky Mountains on the E. and the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada on the W., has Oregon and Idaho on the N., and California on the S. and W.; elevated, cold, dry, and barren, it offers little inducement to settlers, and is in consequence the least in population of the American States; the great silver discoveries of 1859 brought it first into notice, and mining still remains the chief industry; Virginia City and Carson (capital) are the chief towns ”