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

1. Traveling into Nevada’s Mining Past

1 1. Traveling into Nevada’s Mining Past Exploring Nevada’s mining past involves traveling through the historical corridors revealed by documents, landscapes, architecture, and the archaeological record. Each pathway follows an independent source of information that can be combined and used interactively with the others to construct models of the past (Deetz 1988). One source of information , like written documents, can provide a preliminary model of a mining technology, household, or community. The archaeologist or historian can derive hypotheses from the model and test them with data acquired from new research into the archaeological record, architecture, landscapes, or documents. The new information helps modify the preliminary model, leading to the identification of new hypotheses that can be tested and used to revise the model further. In this manner, the construction of mining’s past from several independent sources of information is cyclical and continuously evolving. Documentary Images One corridor into Nevada’s mining past is through written and pictorial documents (image 1). Community plats, cartographic sources, iconographic and pictorial material, company records, records of social service workers, professional and technical journals, consultants’ reports, governmental publications, newspaper accounts, census records, and city directories are the most common documentary accounts of mining (Alanen 1979). Townsite Plats The Townsite Surveys of the General Land Office are one of the most important sources of plats for mining camps. Plats are available for several Nevada mining settlements, including Esmeralda, Aurora, Washoe City, Austin, American City, and Mineral City (Reps 1975). In addition, Sanborn fire insurance maps of several mining towns, including the Comstock towns of Virginia City, Gold Hill, Silver City, and Dayton, are available 2 Traveling into Nevada’s Mining Past for different time periods. The maps give important information about town layout and the use and construction of buildings. Sometimes included are maps of mines and mills in and around the town, such as the Montgomery-Shoshone Mine at Rhyolite. Cartographic Sources The maps produced by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology are useful sources of information about ore deposits. Researchers can also turn to the township and mineral patent survey plats and notes in the Nevada State Office, Bureau of Land Management. Company Records The availability of written accounts kept by mining companies in the state of Nevada varies greatly. Some records are in the Nevada State Historical Society; the Nevada State Archives; the county historical societies, archives, and museums; and the university libraries at the Reno and Las Vegas campuses of the University of Nevada. For the most part, however, the records are scattered. The Churchill County Museum and Archive as well as Special Collections at the University of Nevada–Reno Library, for example, hold ledgers and invoices from the company store of the Cor1 . Miners at Cortez, early 20th century. (Courtesy of Nevada Historical Society.) 3 Traveling into Nevada’s Mining Past tez Mines Limited from 1889 to 1893. Ledgers and invoices for the company store of the Tenabo Mill and Mining Company for 1904, 1908, and 1909 are available elsewhere. The Adelberg and Raymond manuscript collection at the New York Public Library is another valuable source of company data, containing items like the 1865 report of the Manhattan Silver Mining Company in Austin, Nevada. Diaries and Other Personal Reminiscences Dan De Quille’s (1876) The Big Bonanza is a newspaperman’s account of the Comstock Mining District in its heyday. Mary McNair Mathews’s (1985) Ten Years in Nevada or Life on the Pacific Coast is an account of 1870s Virginia City. Hubert H. Bancroft’s (1889) multivolume series “Chronicle of the Kings” includes a biography of Simeon Wenban, a mine operator in Nevada . And John Ross Browne’s (1871) Adventures in the Apache Country: A Tour through Arizona and Sonora, with Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada is another classic. Professional and Technical Journals Two contemporary journals are the standard sources on mining technology and provide a wealth of information about the subject: the Mining and Scientific Press and the Engineering and Mining Journal. There are also several textbooks and handbooks, the most useful of which is Robert Peele’s (1918) Mining Engineers Handbook (1st edition, with several later editions ). Other key publications include Manuel Eissler’s (1898) The Metallurgy of Silver (4th edition); Thomas Egleston’s (1887) Metallurgy of Silver, Gold and Mercury in the United States; Carl A. Stetefeldt’s (1895) The Lixiviation of...