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  • Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada's Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History
  • Sanford E. Marovitz
Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada's Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History. 2 vols. Ed. Lawrence I. Berkove. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007. xlviii + 1076 pp. Cloth, $199.95.

In 1907, roughly half a century after the great Comstock lode of silver and gold was discovered in western Nevada, George Graham Rice established a new weekly in Reno entitled the Nevada Mining News. Within a year he added a column called "By-the-Bye" that presented weekly glimpses of early Comstock history with copious references to details of the industry. Portrayed are the diverse characters who participated in it from laborers to investors, con-men, judges, and politicos, as well as such prominent authors as Mark Twain and Dan DeQuille among others in the "Sagebrush School," an erstwhile designation that Lawrence I. Berkove has revitalized through his outstanding scholarship in the area.

Berkove is the editor of Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada's Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History, an unwieldy title necessary to convey a sense of what the two-volumes contain in over eleven hundred pages, including an illuminating introduction and "Glossary of Mining Terms." The text comprises the fifty-seven "By-the-Bye" columns published between 30 April 1908 and 27 May 1909, followed by an insightful appendix on Twain and another on the unscrupulous Senator "Slippery Jim" Fair. Although "By-the-Bye" continued after the News moved to New York in 1909, Berkove's coverage ends with the tabloid's departure from Reno.

All columns are numbered and dated in the table of contents with subheadings to indicate the topics in each, making it easy to locate subjects of special interest. Berkove reproduces the columns directly from the originals of 1908–09, adding footnotes to explain obscure references or name a few of the narrators identified by such vague designations as "the old veteran," "the septuagenarian Comstocker," and "a former newsman," that do not always refer to the same individuals. He identifies the speakers according to the dates of events being described because not all the narrators were [End Page 178] at the Comstock simultaneously; for example, Joseph Goodman was there in the 1860s and early 1870s and Samuel Davis arrived shortly after Goodman left, so Davis could not have described from experience incidents that occurred prior to 1875. Goodman became the owner and publisher of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, noted now chiefly because he hired Twain as one of his writers; indeed, Roughing It (1872) includes experiences Twain underwent as a reporter for the Enterprise and several "By-the-Bye" columns relate directly to them.

Most of "By-the-Bye" was not written until decades after the events occurred, and the weekly narratives are presented as long quotations as if memorized verbatim interviews of speakers who were present at the scene. The idea was not to deceive but to present the past authentically. The events and people portrayed were still recent enough to be recalled by old-timers generally familiar with Comstock history and the ersatz reality of its legends.

The narratives cover virtually all aspects of Comstock life, especially in its most prominent community, Virginia City. Although the columns are all self-contained, many of the characters reappear under other circumstances or are described by different speakers. Accounts depict heroic pony-express riders, humane outlaws and brutal ones like Sam Brown (who killed quickly without warning or apparent cause), vigilante action, and all the activities associated with mining. The reports in column 55 on a conflict between the Enterprise and the Virginia City Opera House in March 1864 are made particularly rich because of the unexpected role assumed by the show's star, Adah Isaacs Menken, in support of Goodman, Twain, and DeQuille.

Because fortunes were made and lost so quickly—in days or even hours—exaggeration in reporting new strikes, evaluations of individual mines, and especially the buying and selling initially of feet and later of shares in claims was commonplace. If...

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