Mining Archaeology in the American West: A View from the Silver State

Introduction

xiii Introduction Mining and miners left an enduring legacy in the history and landscape of the American West (Smith 1987; Robbins 1994; Hine and Faragher 2000; Paul 2001; Isenberg 2006). Indigenous peoples mined minerals such as salt and turquoise in the region before the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s. Spanish explorers and settlers searched for the mythical El Dorado and opened mineral and metal mines in what is now the Southwest and Southern California. They introduced mining technologies and methods developed earlier in medieval Europe and other parts of New Spain. The discovery of gold in California in 1849 led to the first global mining rush in the American West (Holliday 1999). More mining rushes followed with gold strikes on the Fraser River in British Columbia and on Pikes Peak in Colorado in the late 1850s (Fetherling 1997). The discovery of the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859 spurred the industrialization of mining and revolutionized mining technology, society, and culture throughout the world (James 1998). Subsequent mining rushes took place during the next few decades in the Cariboo region of British Columbia; on Nevada’s Reese River and Treasure Hill; in the Black Hills of South Dakota; at Bannack and Alder Gulch in Montana; at Leadville and Cripple Creek in Colorado; and at Idaho’s Clearwater River, Boise Basin, and Owyhee Mountains, among other places. The end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth heralded the last of the famous global mining rushes in the American West: the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska (Morse 2003) and the gold strikes at Tonopah, Nevada, in 1900 and at nearby Goldfield, Nevada, in 1902 (Elliott 1966; Zanjani 1992, 2002). Mining for base metals and minerals such as copper and iron played an equally prominent role in the history of the American West in the twentieth century (Hyde 1998). Nevada’s mining frontier is a microcosm of the western mining experience and is the focus of this book. Sporadic and small-scale mining took place in what is now Nevada before the expansion of the American state. In the late 18th century, Spanish Franciscan monks traveling on xiv Introduction an old Spanish trail in what is now southern Nevada mined gold placers , silver lodes, and turquoise (Horton and Lincoln 1964:2). Mormon expansion out of the Salt Lake Valley in the late 1840s and 1850s also introduced some mining activity to Nevada in the aftermath of the California Gold Rush (Arrington 1958, 1979; Davies 1984; Owens 2002). In 1855 Mormons established a mission in the Las Vegas Valley at what is known today as Mormon Fort (Arrington 1979). Brigham Young sent a party of prospectors led by Nathaniel V. Jones in April 1856 to search for rumored silver and lead deposits (Arrington 1958:127–129; Lingenfelter 1986:60– 61). They failed to discover a “silver mountain” but did find gold and lead deposits in the Spring Mountains of present-day southern Nevada. Young opted to develop the lead deposit at Potosi Spring close to the Spanish trail (Arrington 1958:127–129). By January 1857 the Mormon miners had “opened the mine, built a small smelting furnace, and produced over 9,000 pounds of lead” containing significant amounts of silver, giving rise to legends about Mormons using silver bullets (Lingenfelter 1986:61). The mine became unprofitable, however, and the group began to search for new lead deposits (Arrington 1958:127–129). Young called the Mormons back to Utah later that year (1857), bringing the search and the Las Vegas mission to an end. In 1861 non-Mormons discovered silver deposits near the Potosi lead mine, and the Colorado Mining Company built another smelter, along with the townsite of Potosi, about one-half mile from the mine (Paher 1970:265–266). William O. Vanderburg (1937:11) noted that the first systematic mining in present-day Nevada began in 1857 with the discovery of gold and silver deposits in the Eldorado Mining District on the Colorado River just west of Lake Mead. Mormon emigrants discovered placer gold at the mouth of Gold Canyon on the Carson River in 1850, culminating in the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, the subsequent “Rush to Washoe,” and the global revolution of the mining industry. In 1860 prospectors found new silver deposits in the Esmeralda district in Mineral County and the Humboldt district in Humboldt County, soon leading to mining rushes in both places. The Reese River strike in 1862 and ensuing rush brought the mining...