Order 2072766: Nevada history

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gold find in what became Searchlight. But by 1900 little had materialized, Nevada’s population had fallen from sixty thousand to forty-two thousand in twenty years, and critics discussed the merits of revoking statehood on the grounds that so small a population had no right to representation in Congress. The state immigration bureau tried to attract new residents with salesmanship—it called Nevada’s climate “the most delightful and salubri- ous in the known world”—but with little success.

Building a Ranching State

Nor did agriculture, which benefited from and contributed to the mining boom, end the depression. A brief livestock boom in the first half of the 1880s stirred hopes for a burgeoning ranching industry, but the number of

Mine developer Anson Phelps Stokes built his “castle,” modeled on an Italian tower, outside Austin in the 1890s. Molly Flagg Knudtsen helped save it from further decay, and it became part of the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Nevada–Reno Library.

Co py ri gh t © 2 01 5. U ni ve rs it y of N ev ad a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d

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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/13/2019 12:05 PM via COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN NEVADA AN: 976669 ; Green, Michael S..; Nevada : A History of the Silver State Account: s8860165

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cattle and sheep grew slowly, while their market value declined. Drought and other weather problems, especially blizzards between 1888 and 1890, only made matters worse.

Still, several large ranching families became important to Nevada’s economy and society. In the 1850s Henry Fred Dangberg arrived in Car- son Valley, H. N. A. “Hock” Mason in the valley named for him along the Walker River, and R. B. Smith, T. B. Smith, and two partners in the Sierra Nevada foothills in Smith Valley. Several others entered the Washoe Val- ley around Reno. Future governor Lewis Bradley worked his way from Mason Valley to Reese River and finally to Elko, and another governor, Jewett Adams, ran cattle and sheep in White Pine and Lincoln Counties. Elko-area rancher Jasper Harrell sold his operations in 1883 to two Texans, John Sparks and John Tinnan, whose cattle spread through northeastern Nevada; their ranching success helped elect Sparks governor in 1902.

Just as California mining corporations often dominated the Comstock Lode, California ranching operations became a presence in Nevada. Henry Miller and Charles Lux arrived from the San Joaquin Valley to buy water rights in Mason Valley and the Humboldt Basin. They eventually hired Hock Mason, bought up seventy thousand acres, and controlled grazing rights on hundreds of thousands more. But overgrazing combined with bad weather to devastate Nevada ranching: at one point Sparks lost more than half of his herd, and Mason lost almost all of his.

All of these ranchers served nearby railroad or mining towns and suf- fered the effects of market forces and drought, a constant threat in the Great Basin. They found other markets: by 1870 Nevada ranchers report- edly shipped thirty thousand animals to California’s butchers each year. But in the mid-1880s, cattle prices dropped, and the San Francisco market had no need for Nevada’s livestock, forcing ranchers to look east, increas- ing their dependence on railroads. Nevada’s farmers had that in common with their counterparts around the country, except others had even worse problems. Farmers and miners eventually decided to take political action.

Inflation and the Money Supply

During and after the Civil War, inflation and its effects worried politi- cal and financial leaders. To finance the war effort, the federal govern- ment issued bonds and, for the first time, printed paper money, called

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“greenbacks” for their color. With so much paper on the market, its value declined—but not that of gold. During Reconstruction Republicans passed a law to pay off war bonds with gold and, in 1875, added the Resumption Act to start retiring all greenbacks from circulation in 1879. These poli- cies sought deflation—the smaller the money supply, the greater the value of existing money, or specie. This policy benefited creditors and harmed debtors: if a loan of one hundred dollars made in inflationary times came due after deflation increased the value of currency, the repayment would be worth more than the original loan. Thus, the more money in circulation, the less its value, and the easier debtors found it to pay what they owed. But that meant the creditor who loaned the money would raise interest rates to make greater profits.

These issues pitted several groups against one another. Businessmen might be creditors (especially in the eastern United States) and debtors (likelier in the West), or verge on becoming either. Farmers and workers usually ended up in debt, but divided on what to do about it. Widespread political corruption during the Gilded Age limited their means and ability to act against policies they opposed. More important, their interests dif- fered: both wanted inflation to help with debts, but farmers sought it to increase the prices they received for their crops. Industrial workers nation- ally and in Nevada’s mines and mills had no desire to create higher prices for the food they needed to buy rather than growing it themselves.

Making the mix more combustible, farming changed during and after the Civil War. The Morrill Act of 1862 to start agricultural colleges and the government’s creation of the Department of Agriculture encouraged sci- entific farming and reduced the need for farm laborers. Many of Jefferson’s yeoman or subsistence farmers moved to the city for industrial jobs or con- centrated on cash crops and became dependent on the market. Meanwhile, the South sought to revive its economy after the devastation the Civil War caused and to retain its African American labor force. Plantation owners turned to sharecropping, meaning black farmers would continue to do the work, in return for a percentage of profits. But southern planters also relied on the market and aid from the government and bankers.

A debt spiral followed for the nation’s farmers. Expanding or retooling their farms required loans or liens on their crops from bankers and mer- chants who sought collateral: either their land or their next crop. When

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markets failed to yield profits or crop prices remained low, they lost their collateral or went deeper into debt in hopes of improving their lot. Thus, they wound up so indebted that they had no hopes of paying off their credi- tors for years, or they lost their farms. They blamed a variety of forces, but especially bankers and merchants.

The Railroad Problem

Farmers and ranchers around the country, including in Nevada, also blamed railroads. They depended on the transcontinental railroad and various feeder lines to bring their crops to market, besides carrying them and assorted freight. In Nevada those with grievances against the railroad included mining companies that also relied on the Union Pacific and Cen- tral Pacific, landowners who grazed cattle and sheep, and individual min- ers and ranchers.

Many Nevadans resented the state’s tax policies toward railroads, but short-haul/long-haul discrimination angered them above all. The Central Pacific charged to carry goods for the longer haul, even if the train dropped off the goods before reaching the more distant destination. In 1881 Rol- lin Daggett, a Territorial Enterprise editor elected to Congress with Bank Crowd support, made a famous speech accusing the cp of overcharging his constituents by $30 million in the past decade and citing evidence of the discrimination: from New York a carload of coal oil cost $300 to San Fran- cisco, $536 to Reno, and $716 to Winnemucca. Two years later departing governor John Kinkead, who also received backing from mining corpora- tions, urged the legislature to take action against the cp.

Their efforts proved fruitless at the federal and state levels, because the Central Pacific lobbied and curried favor with state legislators who, in turn, elected US senators and often rose to higher office. In Nevada the cp appointed agents who handled an assortment of duties, especially poli- tics. They worked with Henry Yerington, manager of the Bank of Califor- nia’s Virginia & Truckee Railroad, and his colleague Abner C. Cleveland, a White Pine rancher who tended to eastern counties. The Nevada-based group wanted taxes and regulations no more than the cp did and usually dealt with state matters, while the cp stressed national affairs. Both sides underwrote candidates and their campaigns—Yerington even described one county’s elected officials as “all friendly to us (and God knows they

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ought to be) and so we have Washoe in the hollow of our hand for many a year to come if desirable.” Then they lubricated the machinery as needed at Carson City and tried to control party conventions, which wrote platforms and nominated candidates who heeded them. When the 1891 legislature succumbed to pressure from ranchers and created a state board of asses- sors and equalization that increased taxes on railroads, lobbyists pressured the 1893 session into abolishing it. Reform-minded politicians learned their lesson.

The Power of Mining and Railroads: The Senate

Mining and railroad interests almost completely dominated Nevada poli- tics from statehood until well into the twentieth century. From the first ter- ritorial election in 1861 until the 1890s, Republicans controlled most federal and state offices. The combination meant that few Democrats who won office either proved more reform minded than the Republicans, who, after all, had no reason to want to change the status quo, or, more likely, had enough wealth to overcome the Republican advantage in voter registration and access to mining and railroad funds.

The first state legislature elected William Stewart and James Nye to the Senate in 1865. Stewart distinguished himself, at least with the cp and the Bank Crowd, with the national mining law and prorailroad measures and won a second term. So did Nye, who took stands for civil rights. But when his second term ended in 1873, Nye lacked an impressive record and finan- cial support and showed signs of senility. Crown Point mine co-owner John P. Jones outbribed William Sharon at the legislature to win and served five terms in the Senate, defending mining interests. At first, his independence frightened railroad operators, but his California investments—Jones joined with Stewart in mine deals and later developed Santa Monica—required him to get along with the Central Pacific.

As his reelection bid loomed in 1874, Stewart announced his retire- ment from politics to pursue opportunities in mining and law. The Bank Crowd had long been Stewart’s main Nevada supporters, and Sharon had made his ambitions known, so his declaration of candidacy proved unsur- prising. Adolph Sutro, who correctly saw Sharon and Stewart as enemies, announced his interest, began a newspaper to compete with Sharon’s Ter- ritorial Enterprise, claimed to belong to a new independent political party,

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and then backed out when he saw no hope. Sharon won, but his six-year term proved disastrous for Nevada: he voted less than 1 percent of the time and never introduced any legislation, even to help himself. He visited Nevada only while en route to San Francisco, where he lived.

Sharon also had an excuse. In 1875 the Bank of California collapsed due to the panic of 1873 and bad investments by founder William Ralston. Ralston deeded ownership to Sharon and admitted his culpability to the board of directors, which fired him as president. Then he died while swim- ming, due to a stroke or a suicide. Sharon returned to San Francisco, and he and partner D. O. Mills revived the bank and restored order. The bank’s success ultimately may have helped Nevadans more than Sharon’s effective- ness or lack of it on Capitol Hill.

After one six-year term, Sharon wanted more, but Nevadans had had enough. In 1880 Democrats found a candidate with deep-enough pock- ets to outspend any Republican: James Fair of the Bonanza Firm. He and his party emulated Republicans tied to the cp and Bank Crowd, spread- ing money around the state as campaign funds or bribes. Democrats swept Nevada for the first time, including the presidential race. Sensing an opportunity, Sutro tried to run as a reformer, promised to spend as much as necessary, and then hatched a plan to accuse Fair of buying the election and swear out warrants to arrest those he bribed—all to no avail. Fair won the six-year term and did almost as little as Sharon did.

By 1886, when Fair declared for reelection, Nevadans had wearied of poor representation and Stewart had tired of sitting on the sidelines. When Stewart announced his plans to run, the presence of Charles C. “Black” Wallace, the Eureka County assessor turned Central Pacific agent for Nevada, as his campaign manager signaled the extent of his support. John Mackay helped fund Stewart’s race, in part out of anger at Fair for divorc- ing his wife to marry his mistress, which offended Mackay’s Catholicism and decorum. Stewart’s return to the Senate in 1887 meant mining and rail- road interests retained power to choose officeholders, but at least Jones had a competent colleague and Nevadans had a full-time senator.

While Fair’s scandal curtailed his political career, a scandal involving Sharon launched another. Sharon’s mistress, Sarah Hill, claimed he prom- ised to marry her after his wife’s death. The case wound up in the Califor- nia courts, since both lived there, and seemed to favor Hill and her law- yer, David Terry, a longtime California politician and judge she married.

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Sharon’s attorney, Stewart, suggested his client claim Nevada residency to shift the matter to the federal courts, where appointed judges—including US Supreme Court justice Stephen J. Field, a onetime Gold Rush attor- ney—might prove more sympathetic. Eventually, Field’s rulings for his old friend Sharon prompted Terry to attack him, and Field’s bodyguard shot and killed Terry. By then, Sharon had died, and to maintain Nevada residency for the case, his son-in-law moved there and entered politics at Stewart’s suggestion. As fate would have it, Francis Newlands became a thorn in Stewart’s side.

The “Crime” of ’73 and the Decline in Nevada Silver

Referring to the “act of John Sherman smuggling the silver dollar out of the list of coins in the Mint Act of ’73,” Stewart wrote, “I felt it my duty to return to the Senate and do what I could to rectify the crime which was clandes- tinely committed without my knowledge.” Stewart had voted for the act, suggesting a complex bill or dishonesty. Granting Stewart’s dishonesty, the evidence leans toward the former. Sherman introduced the act in 1870 as part of a policy of deflation and to emphasize specie, especially gold. When it emerged from the Senate Finance Committee, which Sherman chaired, the Mint Act demonetized silver in favor of gold. Although some constit- uents sounded the alarm, Stewart remained quiet and even endorsed the gold standard in future Senate speeches.

How much the Mint Act of 1873 deepened the depression that devas- tated Nevada’s economy remains debatable. At the time, the Big Bonanza’s discovery began several years of prosperity, but the Comstock and other mining booms soon petered out, while the panic of 1873 sent the national economy into a tailspin. Silver prices fell more than 21 percent in the three years after the Mint Act passed, making it a scapegoat for miners, mining corporations, and politicians.

Nevadans and their allies tried to remonetize silver. In 1876 Richard “Sil- ver Dick” Bland, a congressman from Missouri who had practiced law in Nevada, introduced a bill to coin silver at a ratio of sixteen units of silver to one of gold, but settled for a Silver Commission to study the matter. Jones’s membership helped ensure a favorable report, but the best silver’s support- ers could do—the Bland-Allison Act, cosponsored by Bland and Senator William Allison of Iowa and passed over President Rutherford Hayes’s veto in 1878—bought two to four million dollars’ worth of silver monthly. In

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the 1880s, with silver lacking support in the two major parties—in 1885 President Grover Cleveland even suspended coinage at the Carson City Mint—Nevadans kept accusing the rest of the country of being out to get them. They also acted: in 1885 they and other states held a National Silver Convention to promote remonetization by setting up state silver groups. The Nevada Silver Association met only once, but in 1886, for the first time, both major parties in Nevada called for free silver coinage in their election platforms.

The census of 1890 reported the closure of the frontier—the event that inspired Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier hypothesis—but that year the West achieved new political status. For the first time since the 1870s, Republicans controlled the White House and Congress and hoped to keep it that way. Some of their actions reflected old allegiances and their decline: they tried and failed to pass a bill to enforce voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, partly through the opposition of none other than Stewart, the amendment’s author. But Republicans granted statehood to several western territories, hoping, as Lincoln did with Nevada in 1864, to win votes. Washington, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota became states in November 1889, with Idaho and Wyoming following the next July—all heavily involved in mining or agriculture or both.

Western silver interests saw their opportunity. In November 1889 a National Silver Convention urged the return of free coinage. In 1890 Sher- man, the villain in the Crime of ’73, introduced a Silver Purchase Act: the Treasury Department would buy 4.5 million ounces per month at market prices. The measure passed, not because Republicans suddenly heeded Nevada’s pleas, but because western congressmen traded support for a tar- iff hike to pass the bill.

Then, in 1893, an economic panic resulted from stock speculation, infla- tion and credit problems, and overbuilt railroads unable to meet obli- gations. President Cleveland blamed the silver-purchase measure and persuaded Congress to repeal it. Nevada’s elected officials fought him hard—Stewart delivered a three-day speech, and Jones topped that with a seven-day effort that filled one hundred pages of the Congressional Record. But instead, Nevada wound up back where it had been, stuck in a deep recession and losing population.

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The Populist Movement

Some historians have argued that Populists sought to stop the forward march of capitalism and turn back the clock—in some cases displaying anti-Semitism in their criticism of those shaping the market. Others have called them radical reformers with a thoughtful critique of American soci- ety. As usual, the reality proved subtle and complex. The Populist move- ment evolved from several factors. In the late 1860s, unhappy that indus- trial capitalism increased their dependence on markets and consumers, farmers formed the Grange to promote unity as they went through debt, bankruptcy, and foreclosure. They sought state regulation of railroads, with mixed results, and federal programs to aid them; one of them, the Cooper- ative Extension Service, moved to the state level and continues in Nevada. Those seeking political action, especially against railroads and the crop- lien system, shifted from the Grange to Farmers Alliances, which began in 1875. By the late 1880s, these groups became more united, despite regional and racial differences.

In 1889 the alliances reconstituted themselves, with some support from the Knights of Labor in the industrial Northeast, as the People’s or Popu- list Party. Its members believed that the wealthy, especially in the railroad industry, controlled the Democratic and Republican Parties, necessitating a third party. In 1892 the members met in Nebraska, nominated James B. Weaver for president, and issued the Omaha Platform. They demanded a host of reforms: a graduated income tax, direct election of US senators rather than leaving it to the legislatures, eight-hour workdays, and even broader civil service reform than the Pendleton Act, passed in 1883 to pro- fessionalize the federal government.

Other provisions reverberated in the West. By seeking government ownership of railroads, the Populists hoped to eliminate short-haul/long- haul discrimination. Their proposed independent subtreasury would ware- house crops and require the government to pay them market value and then take responsibility for selling the rest. The Populists also sought to inflate the currency, reducing the debts they owed to bankers and mer- chants by having the government print money—which they would use to pay those debts. But the Populists saw a way to win western support they otherwise would have lacked in industrial mining areas by suggest- ing inflating the currency by remonetizing silver. Weaver won the electoral

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votes of four states that year, and three of them—Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada—depended on silver. The silver and Populist movements seemed to have met and merged.

Silver Clubs and the Silver Party

In 1892 George Nixon had just turned thirty-two. In the early 1880s he started as a railroad telegrapher in Nevada, and by 1886 he had orga- nized a bank, taken over several Humboldt County mines, and started the Winnemucca Silver State. As early as 1889, he suggested, “The friends of silver must place the interest of the metal above party, or better yet, organize a party.” Imitating the farmers’ movement, he called for Neva- dans to create silver clubs to promote mining issues. He set up the first one in April 1892; a week later Eureka followed, with former congressman Thomas Wren and future governor Reinhold Sadler as its leaders. The sil- ver-club movement spread, thanks partly to anger at the two national par- ties: Republicans tried to avoid offending anyone, and Democrats nomi- nated Cleveland, who backed the gold standard and sought repeal of the silver-purchase bill. In June the state’s silver clubs met in Reno, formed the Silver League, made plans to turn it into a political party, and called for remonetization. That September the Silverites met in Winnemucca, nomi- nated candidates for state offices, and endorsed Weaver’s election on the People’s or Populist platform.

Over the next decade, Nevada became a one-party state, with the Sil- ver Party supporting whichever national party showed any inclination to help it. In 1892 the first Silver convention endorsed the Populist platform and Stewart’s reelection; given his ties to the Central Pacific and that his campaign manager, C. C. Wallace, served as its Nevada agent, to call that a contradiction would be an understatement. Wise to Washington’s ways, Stewart had opposed the third-party movement as dangerous to Nevada and himself, but he and Wallace saw the light and helped organize the Silver Party, with the Central Pacific apparently reasoning that maintain- ing control of Nevada would be easier through infiltration rather than opposition—and, as historian Mary Ellen Glass put it, the railroad owners “allowed the politicians and the parties to say anything they pleased about the company and its practices. The important item was that [they] act cor- rectly when it was time to vote.” The Bank of California felt similarly: the Silverites supported Newlands’s successful first race for the House.

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The Silver Party’s influence and contradictions became more apparent as the 1890s unfolded. In 1894, seeking reelection, Newlands spoke at the Silver convention against government ownership of railroads, irking dele- gates, including Wallace, who discouraged him from voicing that position. Yerington, a Newlands ally and the lobbyist for the Bank of California and the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, broke with Wallace and the cp over their abandoning the Republican Party for the Silverites. That year a fourth party materialized, the People’s Party, claiming it wanted to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign two years later and had no faith in the Silver Party as long as railroad executives approved of it and played a role in it. Yerington and the People’s Party would be disappointed: the Silver Party won a landslide victory in 1894, and candidates running under its banner dominated the ballot into the next decade. Yet the People’s Party’s message resonated with some voters: its candidates attacked railroad domination and won significant minority votes.

Silver Party leaders understood the need for national support. In July 1896 Stewart and Newlands hoped to form a national silver party. Before they could, young Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan electrified the Democratic National Convention by declaring that “we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify man- kind upon a cross of gold.” Prosilver Democrats stampeded the conven- tion, called for remonetization, and nominated Bryan for president. The People’s and Silver Parties ratified the choice. Bryan easily won Nevada but lost nationally to Republican William McKinley, and fusion in Nevada proved short-lived: in 1898 Silverites won every major office, but in a few cases by a small majority, and Republicans came within sixty-three votes of defeating Silverite Reinhold Sadler for governor.

The Battles for the Senate

The failure to fuse resulted not from policy but from battles between ambi- tious Silver Party leaders. By 1896 Senators Stewart and John P. Jones had served more than two decades. Younger politicians had ambitions and, granting Stewart’s cp support and Jones’s wealth, the money to satisfy them. In 1897 Silverites and Democrats seemed united behind Jones for a fifth term, but Nixon, who had formed an alliance with Newlands, ran on a platform of “home rule” and “Nevada for Nevadans,” suggesting the

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unpleasant truth: Jones lived in California. Jones won easily, due partly to support from Stewart and Wallace, who saw Newlands and Nixon as a threat.

The next election proved them right. As the 1899 legislature met, after winning reelection to his House seat and trying to lull the opposition, Newlands ran against Stewart. Stewart had a stronger record than Jones and support from the Central Pacific, but critics questioned his Nevada residency and fidelity to the silver movement, noted his advancing age, and resented his power over patronage in Nevada. Worse for Stewart, Yerington and the Bank Crowd backed Newlands.

The race grew ugly. Stewart and Wallace imported lobbyists and gun- slingers to provide physical intimidation if needed. Speaking in Carson City, Newlands sought to exert pressure by—with unintended irony— accusing Stewart and his backers of corruption designed to turn Nevada into a colony for California and demanding that Nevadans take control of their state and restore “integrity to the law-making and elective process.” The day after a test vote showed the assembly tied, Storey County’s W. A. Gillespie, reputedly a Newlands supporter, failed to show up, and Stewart won by one vote. One report accused Gillespie of accepting a bribe, while Sam Davis, the pro-Stewart editor of the Carson City Appeal, claimed Jones’s brother invited Gillespie to ride to Carson City and instead kid- napped him and kept him locked up at another Stewart supporter’s home in Empire.

Many Nevadans agreed that this election proved the need for reform. The previous legislature had passed a “purity of elections” law to improve reporting of contributions, but in 1899 lawmakers repealed it, realizing the Stewart-Newlands fight made it look ridiculous. That election inspired a law creating a preferential primary: Senate candidates would appear on the ballot, and voters could advise legislators, who would be wise to heed them or pay for it at their next election.

A Culture of Corruption

From the territorial period on, Nevadans appeared conscious of their state’s political corruption and interested in doing something about it. Sev- eral factors worked against real reform. Mining (like gaming later) bred transience, movement from one boom to another as each went bust, and

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thus reduced the chances of a population uniting behind change or united long enough to effect change. Also, the need for capital and transportation to make a mining economy function empowered mine and railroad own- ers more than workers and increased the state’s dependence on a particular industry. These factors combined to produce a small power elite without many or much to rule and thus a culture of corruption.

The case of Nevada’s first state treasurer, Eben Rhoades, exemplified the worst of the problem. He hired his brother as his deputy and spent a great deal of time in San Francisco, reportedly trying to sell state bonds, before dying there in 1869. Apparently, he committed suicide, and after his death auditors found Rhoades embezzled or had no record of more than $106,000 in state revenue. When Nevada tried to recover the money, the state Board of Examiners—the governor, attorney general, and secretary of state—claimed ignorance, as did those who “bonded” his salary (ensuring its payment and vouching for his good behavior), including Sharon and Territorial Enterprise editor Joe Goodman. Governor Henry Blasdel, a Vir- ginia City mine superintendent and Republican, had received a loan from Rhoades; the next governor, Lewis Bradley, a Democratic Elko rancher with few ties to Blasdel’s supporters, vetoed a bill to try to recoup some of the funds from the people who bonded Rhoades. According to one esti- mate, the state revenue loss, with accrued interest to the present, may have topped $300 million.

Yet Bradley stood up to mining interests. Ever since the Nevada Consti- tution mandated taxing net proceeds of mines, revenue measures caused controversy as too generous to mining or, the industry said, not generous enough. For example, the first state legislature’s Revenue Act of 1865 set property taxes at $2.75 per $100 of assessed valuation, but mining paid $1, with further deductions. In 1875, as Bradley’s second term began, legisla- tors approved changes in the tax structure that increased what corpora- tions would pay. Because it had to pay more than the Bank Crowd did, the Bonanza Firm questioned the law’s legality and refused to comply. In response, in 1876 both major parties vowed not to change the taxes, but the “Silver Kings” had learned from Sharon and his lobbyists, who viewed the tax hike similarly. The 1877 session passed a bill to cut the tax by about one-third. Bradley vetoed it, declaring that “it does not become the dignity of a State to be dictated to by a couple of non-resident corporations.” The

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Territorial Enterprise, co-owned by Sharon and Mackay, replied, “He is old and decrepit, and it would be cowardice to abuse or insult him. . . . But would to God that he was a young man that we might publish how much we wish that he was dead.”

In 1878, backed by ranching and eastern Nevada mining interests, Brad- ley sought a third term and lost to John Kinkead, who ran with support from Comstock corporations. Mackay and Fair and their allies agreed to pay nearly $300,000 in back taxes, but, at their request, the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill excusing penalties of more than $75,000 for their earlier refusal to pay. After the Nevada Supreme Court declared this unconstitutional as a “special act,” the Bonanza Firm asked the legislature to try again. This time Kinkead vetoed the bill as unconsti- tutional, and the US Supreme Court agreed. The mine owners finally paid their bill in 1883. Kinkead chose not to run again and faced a mini scan- dal: his uncle managed the Reno Savings Bank, whose owners included the state treasurer, who almost went to prison for shifting state funds to the bank.

The Legacy of Discrimination

Nevadans, like most Americans of the time, discriminated against people of color. From what an Elko observer called a policy of “no proscription” toward blacks in the 1870s, Elmer Rusco wrote of Nevada’s African Ameri- cans that “the economic decline that caused a drop in white population was evidently felt even more severely among the black population,” mani- fested in “more hostility toward them from the white community than had been the case earlier.” As the number of whites—especially middle-class whites—declined during the borrasca, African Americans’ economic sta- tus, already less secure than that of whites, fell even more noticeably. So did their social status: more derogatory language began appearing in the press, and by the early twentieth century several communities had become “sundown towns,” where authorities barred African Americans from living there or forced them to leave—as they did with other minorities.

The Chinese faced segregation, bias, and violence in many areas, espe- cially during economic troubles, which Nevada had in abundance. Poli- ticians appealed to voters by singling out the Chinese as a threat, partly on moral grounds, mainly as endangering white people’s jobs. After Vir- ginia City’s miners union blocked the Chinese from working on Virginia

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& Truckee Railroad construction in 1869, the legislature followed with a ban on Chinese labor on state projects. Future legislative sessions endorsed efforts to reduce immigration until the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited “skilled and unskilled labor employed in mining” from entering the United States. Meanwhile, as others did in the West, Neva- dans punctuated their opposition by creating anti-Chinese clubs from Carson City to Austin to Tuscarora; in 1878 some Reno residents ordered Chinatown emptied out within forty-eight hours and then rioted, but local authorities stepped in and the Chinese stayed. But the combination of the exclusionary law and Nevada’s economic decline reduced the Chinese pop- ulation enough to ease tensions.

Other tensions remained over Mormons. Few Mormons lived in Nevada late in the nineteenth century. In 1877, under Edward Bunker’s leadership, twenty-three Saints moved to southern Nevada as the “United Order” to farm near the Virgin River. They tried the kind of communal living that helped inspire the church’s founding and earlier utopian settlements. They ate, stored crops, and raised animals together. After about two years, that plan failed amid squabbling, but they continued on their own in their town, Bunkerville. In 1880 another group of Mormons settled five miles northwest, in Mesquite Flat, later the city of Mesquite.

Nevadans debated an expanded Mormon presence. In the 1880s, two decades after Congress approved the expansion that created Nevada’s pres- ent boundaries, Stewart led an effort to annex Idaho Territory’s southern tip to Nevada. Conflicts similar to those in Nevada in the 1850s broke out in Idaho between Mormons and non-Mormons. Stewart and other Neva- dans felt anti-Mormon legislation would aid their chances of capturing southern Idaho. In the spirit of the federal Edmunds Act of 1882, which banned polygamy, the 1887 legislature required any would-be voter to take an oath denying membership in the Mormon Church. A year later a Mor- mon resident of Panaca tried to vote and sued over his denial. Stewart said, “It would be very dangerous to allow the Mormons to vote in our State. The proposition to colonize and take possession of our State Government is seriously considered by the Mormon Church.” Instead, in 1888 the state high court held the law violated the Nevada Constitution’s definition of eli- gible voters. Nevada fared no better at the national level: Idaho Territory remained intact. In 1890 lds president Wilford Woodruff announced the end of church support for polygamy.

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These events fostered new Mormon communities. In the 1880s antipo- lygamy laws permitted the federal seizure of Mormon property, and some livestock wound up with an eastern Nevada company that then proved unable to account for some of it. After Utah became a state in 1896, as part of an attempt at redress, Mormons received the White River Valley Ranch, about 15,000 acres in southern White Pine and northern Nye Counties. In 1898 Mormons began farming the area and soon settled the towns of Lund and Preston.

The Debate over Native American Rights

Republicans and Democrats tried a variety of policies toward Native Ameri- cans in the nineteenth century, with disastrous results. The reservation system provided tribes with land, but Southern Paiutes along the Muddy River demonstrated the problem: they received nearly 2 million acres, mostly desert, but nearby settlers refused to leave the arable land and the federal government reduced the Moapa Reservation to about 1,000 acres. Ending the reservation system won support for several reasons: continuing Native efforts to stop encroachment and eliminate whatever power Native groups still enjoyed, the Euro-American desire for land, and the view of capitalism and traditional religion as superior to Native beliefs. The Dawes Severalty Act or General Allotment Act of 1887 granted Native Americans land—160 acres to a family head, 80 to a single person or orphan, 40 to minors—in hopes of ending the reservation system, encouraging assimila- tion, and opening land to whites. In 1898 the Curtis Act followed by trying to eliminate tribal courts and governments, subjecting Native Americans to the regular US government.

Stewart’s record displayed the contradictory impulses of Nevadans— indeed, Americans—on these issues. In addition to backing a national mining college, a national college to train teachers, and the Second Morrill Act of 1890 to expand the original measure of 1862, he won federal support for an Indian school for which the state and Ormsby County contributed land and money. It opened in December 1890 southeast of Carson City with thirty-seven students and remained Nevada’s only boarding school for Native Americans. It sought to teach them trades and assimilate them into American culture, but, before the school closed in 1980 and became a his- toric site, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia) allowed students to speak their Native languages and learn more about their culture.

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Yet even as he sought aid for the Washoe, Stewart tried to eliminate Northern Paiute title to the Walker River Reservation and part of the Pyra- mid Lake Reservation. These efforts resulted in part from rumors in the 1880s of mineral deposits on the Walker River Reservation; during the borrasca, Nevadans sought ore wherever it might exist. Nevadans wanted access to the Walker Reservation’s farming and lumber resources and hoped to use Pyramid Lake for commercial purposes rather than allowing Northern Paiutes to keep relying on it for fishing and thus their survival. Nor did Stewart object when his allies at a Bank of California subsidiary, the Carson & Colorado Railroad, tried to break a contract to provide free transportation to Walker River Paiutes in return for the right-of-way.

Native Americans also faced difficulties with whites in eastern Nevada. In 1873 those living near Ely heard about northern California’s Modoc War and feared that nearby Shoshone and Goshutes in the Snake and Spring Valleys planned to attack them. Their fear went unrealized, but in Septem- ber 1875 the White Pine War ensued when a Goshute killed a mining pros- pector and settlers responded by killing three Indians and then hanging the Goshute. The Bureau of Indian Affairs moved about 160 Shoshone and Goshutes north to Deep Creek, emptying the two valleys, which became open to grazing for white-owned ranches.

Native American Leaders

Few Native American reformers gained greater fame and importance than Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Paiute born around 1844 as Thocmentony, or “Shell Flower.” Her grandfather Captain Truckee and father, Chief Winnemucca, got along with white explorers and emigrants. Educated at the home of William Ormsby (later killed in the Pyramid Lake War against Northern Paiutes led by her cousin) and a Catholic school in California, she joined her family at the Malheur Reservation, set up on President Ulysses Grant’s orders for the Northern Paiutes and Bannock (Northern Paiutes liked this no better than the Western Shoshone, who expected to relocate to the Duck Valley Reservation near the Nevada-Idaho line in 1877). She taught in a local school and worked as an interpreter for the resi- dent Indian agent. But his replacement began refusing to pay the Northern Paiutes for their work and sold supplies intended for them. The Bannock rebelled, and although Winnemucca claimed they took her family and oth- ers hostage, they became part of a relocation near Yakima, Washington.

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During the war she helped her family escape from an enemy encampment and worked as a translator and scout for US Army officers, who developed great respect for her and her abilities.

These events made her a public figure. She began to lecture in Cali- fornia and Nevada on Native American issues and went to Washington, DC, in 1880, to meet with Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz on issues affecting Natives; as she put it, he made “promises which, like the wind, were heard no more.” Back in California, she married a Bureau of Indian Affairs employee and continued lecturing; they went east, where she spoke on her life in the West more than four hundred times, often condemning the reservation system. She began publishing articles, and reformers she

Few Native Americans worked harder to promote peace between their people and whites than Sarah Winnemucca on the left, next to her father, Chief Winnemucca; her brother, Natchez; and Captain Jim, another Northern Paiute chief, beside an unidentified boy. Courtesy of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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met in Boston helped her bring out Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, in 1883—the first book by a Native American woman. Back in Nevada, she built a school, Peabody’s Institute, near Lovelock to educate Native American children in their language and culture, but lack of sup- port and health problems forced her to join her family in Idaho, where she died of tuberculosis in 1891. She dedicated much of her life to Native rights and trying to work with whites to protect them—often to no avail. But she brought attention to major issues and demonstrated the ability of a woman and a Native American to fight for justice in a time when neither could eas- ily do so.

Another Northern Paiute had a far-reaching impact. Born circa 1856 in present-day Esmeralda County, Wovoka grew up in a white rancher’s fam- ily, took the name Jack Wilson, and learned English. Around 1870 Tävibo, a Mason Valley Northern Paiute, prophesied the earth would swallow up whites and dead Natives would return; Native Americans could speed these events by dancing in circles, singing religious songs, and seeking spiritual and moral renewal. In the late 1880s, Wovoka, sometimes reputed to be Tävibo’s son, had a similar vision, perhaps combining Native thought

Wovoka, the Northern Paiute who became widely known for the Ghost Dance, with his grandson Dennis Bender, possibly outside the Carson Indian School early in the twentieth century. Courtesy of Special Collec- tions, University of Nevada–Reno Library.

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with a form of Christian mysticism. Winnemucca dismissed his claims as “nonsense,” and when the Western Shoshone at the Duck Valley Reserva- tion held a Ghost Dance that attracted one thousand visitors, the crowd lost interest when no Indian messiah appeared. After this Ghost Dance religion spread in the West, the Lakota Sioux sent a delegation in 1889 to meet Wovoka and returned to their Dakota homes convinced of the com- ing millennium.

Cruel disappointment and violence followed. Wovoka hated war and the Sioux hoped to avoid it, but they believed that sacred or magic shirts would protect them from attack. When the Sioux conducted the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota in 1890, the Seventh Cavalry saw it as an opportunity to disarm the group—and, historian Heather Cox Rich- ardson has argued, Republican politicians saw a way to demonstrate their commitment to opening western lands for mining and agriculture. The firing of a shot led to the massacre of three hundred Native Americans. Wounded Knee became a sacred place for Native American rights and a reminder of the injustices done to an entire people. Despite his pacifism, Wovoka lost some of his luster, although Native Americans and anthro- pologists continued to visit and learn from him until his death in 1932.

Women’s Rights

Sarah Winnemucca’s advocacy for her people sometimes obscures her role in promoting women’s rights. Other late-nineteenth-century Nevadans also supported women’s rights in a variety of ways, reflecting changes in the state: as mining and migration into the state subsided, the percentage of women approached half and average ages rose. Despite the folklore, few women worked as prostitutes, and most women who settled in Nevada worked to build a family life and a better community. The spread of Vic- torian values and the “cult of domesticity,” which emphasized the home as women’s sphere and their duty to play a civilizing role in their communities and the lives of their families, provided an avenue for them to try to shape policies that would improve morals and education. But Nevada women found this difficult to accomplish in so economically depressed a state.

Nevada became one of the first western states to discuss women’s suf- frage. In 1869, before Wyoming Territory approved it later that year, Assem- blyman Curtis Hillyer of Storey County introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to allow the vote. He reasoned, “The politics of the

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country is corrupt,” and women’s traditional role as tribunes of morality and civilization would elevate public discourse. The legislature agreed, but amending the Nevada Constitution requires two consecutive sessions to act. Despite the state’s first women’s suffrage convention at Battle Mountain and campaigning by women’s rights advocate Laura DeForce Gordon, the 1871 legislature said no. A significant turnover in membership and contro- versy that had grown since the previous vote apparently caused its down- fall. On several occasions, apparently believing Nevada’s suffering economy required them to do something, lawmakers came close to allowing a vote on amending the constitution. After the 1895 legislature approved a simi- lar measure, it failed in 1897 in a close vote, despite visits from Susan B. Anthony and the formation of the Nevada Women’s Equal Suffrage League.

Women found other outlets to improve Nevada society. Eliza Cook, one of Nevada’s first trained women doctors, practiced in Reno and, belonging to suffrage and temperance organizations, recalled that she “talked on both subjects when opportunity offered and made myself very objectionable at times, I’ve no doubt.” Mila Tupper Maynard supported suffrage from her position as a Unitarian minister in Reno, where she conducted classes on social reform and set up the Twentieth Century Club, which helped start her community’s first kindergarten and public library. Hannah Clapp and Eliza Babcock operated the Sierra Seminary, a private school in Carson City; after it closed, Clapp became one of the university’s first professors in Reno. There she worked for suffrage and helped educate Anne Martin, who would become Nevada’s most famous advocate of social reform.

Some Nevada women found an outlet through the written word. Mar- ried to editors Henry Mighels and then Sam Davis, Nellie Mighels Davis organized the first Red Cross in Nevada during the Spanish-American War and served as its first president, but achieved greater fame with the Carson City Morning Appeal, which she briefly published and wrote for, including as the only woman to cover the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight in 1897. Idah Meacham Strobridge grew up in Lassen Meadows between Winnemucca and Lovelock, but her husband and three sons died during blizzards in 1888–89. She left Nevada and began writing, publishing several books and becoming known as “the first woman of Nevada letters” for her folktales, short stories, and essays.

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Helen Stewart and Southern Nevada

After Mormon missionaries left Las Vegas, their old fort became a ranch. Octavius Decatur Gass had taken over the mission, by then a general store for miners like himself, and expanded his holdings to about a thousand acres by the mid-1870s. But Gass ran into problems: boundary changes cost him tax money and his political influence; he upset Mojave Desert military camps, which accused him of overcharging for his fruits, vegetables, and meats; and he kept suing southern California land baron Abel Stearns over ownership of tin mines in the Temescal Mountains. Constantly mortgag- ing his ranch finally cost him ownership of it in 1881—not typical of Popu- lists, but, like them, caught in his own debt spiral.

The ranch’s new owner, Archibald Stewart, a Pioche merchant, moved there with his wife, Helen, and their children. The Kiels, neighboring ranchers known for welcoming gunslingers, resented Stewart, whom they saw as having swindled their friend Gass. This mixture became combus- tible in the summer of 1884. A Stewart ranch hand went to work for the Kiels, insulting Helen Stewart as he left. Upon returning, her husband rode over to the Kiel Ranch. Two hours later she received a note from Conrad Kiel telling her to “take Mr. Sturd away he is dead.” One of the gunsling- ers shot him, claiming self-defense, although she remained convinced that they had ambushed him.

She faced a difficult situation, to say the least. With four children, a fifth on the way, her neighbors tied to her husband’s shooting, and little business experience, she stayed. Stewart operated the ranch, ran a roadside rest for travelers, and hoped someday to sell it to developers. She had to wait until 1902 and Senator William Andrews Clark of Montana, who paid fifty-five thousand dollars for her land and the water rights for his proposed rail- road from Los Angeles to Salt Lake. After that she remained active as Las Vegas grew around her, holding educational offices, studying local history, amassing a collection of Paiute baskets, and deeding ten acres of her land to the local Southern Paiutes for a colony where they still live in down- town Las Vegas. Thus did Helen Stewart strike a blow for women as a ranch owner, aid Native Americans, and help build what became Nevada’s largest city. For good reason, she became known as “the first lady of Las Vegas.”

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The Panic and the Unemployed

The panic of 1893 caused high unemployment and induced businesses to tighten their belts. Angry over the downturn and disparities in wealth, “General” Jacob Coxey proposed public works projects to provide jobs. Rebuffed by Congress, he organized an “Industrial Army” to march across the country to help unemployed workers bring attention to their plight. Urged to find a way to stop them, Governor Roswell Colcord dismissed concerns: “It would be madness for such an army to subsist while march- ing this sparsely settled State.” The Central Pacific hurried the approxi- mately 1,000-man “army” across Nevada in twenty-three cattle cars, but the unemployed miners and other laborers who tried and failed to join

Helen Jane Wiser Stewart reluctantly came to Las Vegas with her husband and stayed to raise a family, run a ranch, serve as postmaster, and ul- timately become the “first lady of Las Vegas.” Courtesy of Special Collections, Univer- sity Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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them in Reno paraded and demonstrated until the sheriff ordered them to leave town or go to jail. Coxey’s Army went on to Washington, DC, where authorities arrested him for marching on the White House lawn, ending the demonstrations.

The railroads they rode faced labor problems. In June 1894 Eugene Debs led an American Railway Union strike against Pullman, which made rail- road cars, and other companies. When President Grover Cleveland sent troops, about 250 soldiers took over railroad operations in Winnemucca, where demonstrations had been peaceful. In Wadsworth a crowd dam- aged some of the railroad equipment, and troops attacked strikers and their sympathizers. In Reno, by contrast, demonstrators threw eggs at the army. When Nevadans who objected to the federal soldiers asked Colcord to seek their removal, his negative reply prompted Nixon in the Silver State to encourage government ownership of railroads to avert any such future “expenditure of public force for private benefit.”

Federal involvement broke the strike, but Nevadans made their sym- pathies clear. Both Coxey’s Army and the Pullman strikers supported inflation and free silver, attacked Cleveland over the gold standard, and received aid in Nevada from several Silver Party leaders. The Silver Party’s advocacy of mining interests, rich and poor, helped its slate coast to victory in the elections that fall. Nationally and in Nevada, the demonstrations and the government response to them helped fire support for William Jennings Bryan’s presidential candidacy in 1896.

The Limits of Reform

As the role of Stewart and Newlands in the Silver and Populist movements and the difficulty in passing women’s suffrage demonstrated the limits of reform in Nevada, so did actions that stamped the state as immoral, even if it shared the prejudices of the time and permitted activities that have become common. In 1897 “Gentleman Jim” Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons wanted to fight for the world heavyweight boxing championship, but sev- eral states barred them from doing so because they viewed prizefighting as no more than organized mayhem. Granting that recent rule changes had eliminated some of the bloodiness, their struggling economy meant Nevadans could ill afford to be choosy and the match would bring them publicity and business. The legislation to permit the fight, which Fitzsim- mons won, proved controversial: church officials divided over its morality,

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and some critics directed anti-Semitism at Carson City businessman Al Livingston, one of its supporters. It also foreshadowed the future: Nevada legalized what other places would not and hoped those visiting the state to indulge in dubious behavior would like the place enough to move there and become taxpayers.

Gambling provided another means of generating revenue. Soon after statehood, the legislature tried to make it legal, at least partly because it went on anyway. But Governor Blasdel, a Methodist known as “the cof- fee and chocolate governor” for his opposition to serving alcohol at state functions, vetoed it in 1867 and 1869. The second time, lawmakers overrode him, and gambling remained legal for the rest of the century. But the state avoided interfering in local operations, letting local sheriffs regulate the games and collect the fees, which counties divided with the state. With box- ing and gambling, Nevada erected a system of limited regulation and rely- ing on outsiders for prosperity that came back to haunt it later and made clear that its commitment to moral reform depended on what its economy could afford—as it proved as the twentieth century began, Nevada’s econ- omy revived, and moral reform loomed on the horizon.

s u g g e s t e d r e a d i n g s

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Davies, Richard O. The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014.

Glass, Mary Ellen. Silver and Politics in Nevada, 1892–1902. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1970.

Goodwyn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Hittman, Michael, and Don Lynch. Wovoka and the Ghost Dance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, 1883. Reprint, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994.

McArthur, Aaron. St. Thomas, Nevada: A History Uncovered. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2013.

Paher, Stanley W. Las Vegas: As It Began—as It Grew. Las Vegas: Nevada Publications, 1971.

Patterson, Edna B., Louise A. Ulph, and Victor Goodwin. Nevada’s Northeast Frontier. Sparks, NV: Western, 1969.

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Pisani, Donald J. To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848–1902. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.

———. Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850–1920. Law- rence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

Postel, Charles. The Populist Vision. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Richardson, Heather Cox. West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After

the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. ———. Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre. New York:

Basic Books, 2010. Roske, Ralph J. Las Vegas: A Desert Paradise. Tulsa, OK: Continental Heritage Press,

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Like a new year, a new century marks a turning point. In American his- tory, the controversial election of 1800 prompted the first transfer of government power, from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson; the more controversial 2000 election, with Al Gore’s popular-vote lead and George W. Bush’s Electoral College victory, took place in the shadow of y2k and concerns about computers upending civilization. By contrast, the 1900 presidential election seemed quiet—William Jennings Bryan disappointed Nevada Silverites, losing again to Republican William McKinley—but the twentieth century’s first decades brought different responses to change throughout the United States and the world. Nevada evolved similarly. Its government and political system changed in important ways, but it did so amid an economic revival created by a mining boom in the south-central and eastern portions of Nevada that reshaped the state’s society and culture in almost every way.

Births of the Booms

As 1900 arrived, Nevada’s two-decade depression continued, and pros- pectors searched and hoped. In the San Antonio Mountains southwest of Belmont, one story says, Western Shoshone Tom Fisherman led miner, rancher, and attorney Jim Butler to a new bonanza. According to legend— and perhaps some reality—a windstorm that May 19 forced Butler to seek shelter. His quest to find his burro, which had wandered away, led him to an outcropping of gold and silver, but he had no funds to assay it. He turned to county recorder Wilson Brougher and Belmont lawyer Tasker Oddie, a New Yorker representing mining investor Anson Phelps Stokes. Also short of money, Oddie traded part of his interest in the ore to local

A New Century, a New Boom

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science teacher Walter Gayhart in return for an assay. A month later, Gay- hart reported 640 ounces in silver and $200 in gold per ton. Not until August 25, after finishing with clients and harvesting, did Butler return to the site and file claims for himself and his two partners—and apparently he acted only at the behest of his wife, Belle, who discovered the largest Butler claim and ran their ranch.

Their new camp, Tonopah, never approached Virginia City in impor- tance or wealth (production peaked at $9 million in 1914), but it ended Nevada’s two decades of depression. Just as mining booms begat other towns—Virginia City and Austin had been “mother camps,” for exam- ple—Tonopah fostered other booms and boomtowns. Late in 1902 Jim Butler and Tom Kendall grubstaked prospectors Harry Stimler and Wil- liam Marsh in exchange for a percentage of what they found. On Decem- ber 4, in the Columbia Mountains about thirty miles south of Tonopah, they found gold—and Fisherman, who may have been related to Stimler’s Shoshone mother, probably led them there. Additional exploration, espe- cially in January 1904, gave birth to Goldfield. That year Frank “Shorty” Harris and Ernest Cross found gold in southern Nye County’s Amargosa Valley, just east of Death Valley. This area became the Bullfrog District, home of the mining boomtown of Rhyolite and a nearby freighting center, Beatty.

Butler’s original find led to about a hundred discoveries and, with them, the creation of numerous boomtowns that served, as nineteenth-century towns did, as hubs for mining and ranching hinterlands. Cattlemen located gold north of Tonopah at an old camp, Manhattan, in 1905, and the popula- tion reached about four thousand in a year—until the San Francisco earth- quake also shook investors and delayed development, although the camp revived and produced into the 1920s. Almost concurrently, gold discoveries to the north triggered another mining town, Round Mountain, which gen- erated $1 million by 1909, while other short-lived camps sprang to life near Tonopah and Goldfield. Like their predecessors, they boasted large num- bers of saloons (one in Rawhide rented floor space as beds) as well as news- papers, schools, and community organizations. Tonopah and Goldfield residents suffered through a great deal of disease, due partly to unsani- tary conditions, yet Tonopah in particular became civilized more speedily than other, earlier, camps, with more families moving in and wives forming clubs and societies.

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