A History of SMOKY VALLEY, NEVADA

A History of SMOKY VALLEY, NEVADA A History of SMOKY VALLEY, NEVADA Robert D. McCracken Central Nevada Historical Society Tonopah Nevada All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. A History of Smoky Valley, Nevada by Robert D. McCracken © Copyright 1997 by Robert D. McCracken Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-067669 ISBN: 0-9652908-2-4 Designed by Paul Cirac, White Sage Studios, Virginia City, Nevada Cover design by Erin Kirk New, Watkinsville, Georgia Composition by Jean 0. Charney, Fort Collins, Colorado Printed in the United States of America To the memory of my father, Robert G. McCracken, a true man of the West. Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART ONE The Early History of Central Nevada 1 - Prologue: Origin of a World-Class Gold Mine The Big Bang Stars: The Engines of Creation Star Cookers The Earth's Crust Develops The Mountains Rise Making a Gold Deposit Origin of a World-Class Gold Deposit 2 - Smoky Valley: The First Inhabitants The Terrain The Environment The Clovis First Theory The Search for Remnants Paleolithic Life at Lake Tonopah The Pre-Archaic Period Surviving the Archaic Period The Numic Spread Theory The Western Shoshone The Coming of the White Man Notes 3 - Exploration of Central Nevada The Phantom River A White Man Crosses the Great Basin Ogden's Snake Country Expeditions Walker's Expedition to California Fremont Names the Great Basin Simpson's Better Route to California Burton Describes Smoky Valley A Collision of Cultures 4 - California Gold Sets the Stage Precious Metals in Early America Early Gold Discoveries in California The Gold at Sutter's Mill Gold! Gold! Gold! An Experiment in Genuine Democracy The Mining District—A Community of Equals Technology Brings Social Change A Coterie of Prospectors The Western Mindset PART TWO Smoky Valley 5 - Settlement of Smoky Valley The Comstock Lode and Virginia City The Booms at Aurora and Austin Mining Districts Multiply Towns and Mines in the Toiyabes The Murphy Mine and Mill at Ophir City Life in Toiyabe City Towns and Mines in the Toquimas Ranchers Service the Boom at Smoky Valley Smoky Valley Stations and Stages The Smoky Valley Salt Field John Muir Visits Smoky Valley The U.S. Geodetic Survey Station on Arc Dome Nevada—The Last Chance to Strike it Rich Notes 6 - A Digression on Prospectors, Leasers, and Promoters The Desert Prospector How a Prospector Staked a Claim The Leasing System The Role of the Promoter On High Graders Notes PART THREE The Town of Manhattan 7 - Manhattan's First Years Early Mining in the Manhattan Area Ledges of Gold Manhattan Becomes a Town Rounsevell's Observations DeWolf's Portrait of Manhattan Glowing Reports There Were Problems Manhattan Weathers Disasters Towns near Manhattan The Important Mines and Mills 8 - Placer Mining in Manhattan Gulch Good News from Manhattan Placer Mining Was Hard Work Dry Wash Wilson's Manhattan Placer Outfit Three Men Killed in a Placer Shaft Manhattan Placer Mining in the 1930s Manhattan's Gold Dredge Bob Bottom's Placer Operation Notes 9 - Life in Manhattan in the Early Years The Toiyabe Literary Club A Case of Child Neglect The Shooting of Sheriff Thomas W. Logan Stray Dog Bob Human Hogs A Practical Joke Manhattan's First School A Church for Manhattan The First Major Fire Manhattan's Red-Light District 10 - Manhattan Reminiscences Life at a Rural Quarry A Job Turns into a "Heap of Living" Jim Boni Recalls Winter in Manhattan Jim Boni's Trucking Adventures PART FOUR The Town of Round Mountain 11 - The Development of Round Mountain A Great Discovery Coombs's Account of the Gold Discovery The New El Dorado Nature's Treasure Trove Gordon Runs Round Mountain Mining Early Mining at Round Mountain Early Mills in Round Mountain Making a Buck Round Mountain Placer The Town Grows Community Services Social Life The Vucanoviches Move to Round Mountain Notes 12 - Interlude: High-Grading at Round Mountain Finders Keepers Black Jack Raymond Fencing High-Grade 13 - The Development of a World-Class Mine Trying to Make a Gold Mine Modern Placer Mining Coombs Tries to Buy Round Mountain Elwood Dietrich Enters the Picture Copper Range Advances Don Simpson Overhauls the Operation Another Buyout A Question of Archaeology Round Mountain's Workforce and Operation Technical Aspects of Mining Reclamation of the Mine Site Townsite Ownership The Construction of Hadley Rich Gold Specimens Still Being Found Notes 14 - Men and Mules to Match the Mountains A Galvanized Cousin Jack Norman Coombs Comes to Round Mountain Hard Work Mules: Partners in the Mines Life Expectancy and Silica Dust The Miner's Lifestyle Rich Rewards Henry Stackpool: Tramp Miner 15 - Will Berg and Fulton Little Kelsay: Two Who Did Not Mine Will Berg's Water System A Born Entrepreneur Lillian Yeager Marries Will Berg Fulton Little Kelsay Notes PART FIVE Life in Smoky Valley 16 - Schoolteachers in Smoky Valley A Career for Young Women Flo Reed Bessie "Betty" Holts Florence Huffman Ellis Evenings Out 17 - Memories of Childhood Mildred Cornell: Tumbling Tomboy Jim Boni Recalls Traveling Doctors The McPherson Girls: All-Day Adventures Fun in Round Mountain A Boy at Millers A Burro of One's Own 18 - That Can-Do Nevada Spirit The Cirac Family The White Caps Antimony Don Cirac Works at Round Mountain Bob Wilson Gets Hooked on Mining McCracken and Wilson in Reveille Valley Wilson Works at Round Mountain Wilson's South Twin Mine 19 - Life on the RO Ranch The Founding of the Rogers Ranch Childhood on the Ranch Rene Rogers Works in Round Mountain Don Cirac Works for Emma Rogers Carl Haas Buys the Rogers Ranch Big Steers on the RO Haas Builds an Empire Del Loomis Haas: From City Life to the Ranch Notes 20 - Carvers: Nucleus of a Community Jean Patterson Dutton Marries Gerald Carver Carvers' Smoky Valley Rainbow Ranch Bar and Café The Social Life of Smoky Valley Indians in the Valley Business Grows at Carvers Desperadoes Apprehended Notes 21 - Mining and Ranching: Endangered Ways of Life The Future of Mining The Grazing Question Is the Range Overgrazed? In Defense of Ranchers Dick Carver's Challenge to Federal Ownership One Possible Outcome The Common Interest Notes References Index Preface If you don't know how you got somewhere, you don't know where you are. If you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. —James Burke The usual reason given for the study of history is that knowledge of the past will spare a person or society from repeating mistakes. This justification is no doubt true, but I believe there is another persuasive reason to study history: It has to do with self-knowledge and identity. Each of us is a synthesized sum of individual experiences. Each moment of our lives results in an iteration: New experiences are incorporated into a baseline consisting of a synthesis or pattern of all past experiences. In a sense, each of us is the past made manifest in the present; and at each instant each of us is pregnant with future identity. Take away our pasts and we are amnesiacs, lost in time and space with no identity. I believe much the same can be said of society. Society today is the past made manifest in the present; and, as with the individual, present society is pregnant with its future. Take away a society's past and, like the amnesiac, it is lost in time and space, without identity. We are, in large measure, products of our societies; since most of our experience is drawn from our society, we are in an important way our society's history incarnate. We are the children of our society's history. Without an understanding of history, we have no societal lineage; we are a collective amnesiac, endlessly adrift, marooned in the eternal present. Given the importance of historical knowledge to both individuals and society, it is distressing that history is largely ignored, indeed devalued, by so many. We are for the most part a history-blind society, perhaps as much as any in the world today. Perhaps our lack of appreciation and understanding of history has more than a little to do with the many difficulties our society presently faces. It is hoped this book will add to the understanding of Nevada's history and perhaps shed a little light on just who we are. A brief note about Chapter 1: When I began the first draft of this volume, I immediately became curious about where all the gold at Round Mountain and Manhattan came from. "Why was it there? What happened?" I wondered. These questions led me to ask, "Where did the Smoky Valley and the Toiyabe and Toquima Ranges come from? Why are they there?" These questions led me further back in time and prompted me to ask, "Where did the material from which the mountains were formed come from?" Such questions took me back step-wise until I found myself asking about the origins of the earth, then the universe. I searched for answers to these questions and concluded that Smoky Valley was much too large and magnificent a place about which to write a history without starting at the beginning—the very beginning, the creation of the universe—as best as science understands it. Thus, Chapter 1 begins with the scientific explanation of the origin of the universe and the basic elements; it then jumps to a quick overview of the formation of the solar system and the earth.

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