of 1865 and 1866, when traffic was at its peak, there was hardly an hour
of the day when one could not see the road lined for miles—one seeming
endless procession moving westward. No other road ever had such a
promiscuous, persevering throng—a weary plodding throng, whose way was
fraught with many hardships, whose dead were left all along the Old
Trail from the Missouri river to the Golden Gate. Other stage lines
threaded the West and the Southwest—but the Overland has gone down in
history as the greatest of them all.
Three score and ten years have now gone by since the last Concord stage
coach made its final run from Atchison, through Granada. All equipment
was at that time moved west to the end of steel—leaving the eastern end
of the great Overland Trail abandoned and waiting, a lost ghost, for the
day when Fate, slow but sure, should plow it under. And with poignant
memory was gone, too, a stirring bit of frontier life in the West.
MEMORY’S STOREHOUSE UNLOCKED Published in Wetmore Spectator,
Holton Recorder, Seneca Courier-Tribune, Atchison Daily Globe—
December, 1938.
By John T. Bristow
Green Campbell’s Colorful Mining Career
The train wound its way by easy stages down from the mountain heights
into the desert valley. The railroad split the great basin in halves.
On either side treeless mountains rose in endless succession. It was
mid-summer in the great inter-mountain region—and the sage-fringed
valley, broad and almost level, stretching ahead for miles and miles,
shimmered frightfully under the glaring rays of the noonday sun. And
winds swept out of the south like withering blasts from a slag furnace.
It was the Utah desert.
Far off to the right, shrouded in desert haze, could be seen the tip of
a mountain which marked the approximate location of a famous early-day
mining camp. The scene — barren, desolate, and so familiar to me —
brought back a flood of memories. Instantly my mind dwelt upon events
of the long-ago in that old mining camp and simultaneously with the
home-life back in Kansas of the man who made it.
In that brief flash I saw it all. In that jumbled picture I glimpsed
a sturdy hoist over a deep shaft at the base of that mountain,
whose cables had in times past brought up daily tons of high-grade
argentiferous ore, every ton of which, though it greatly enriched my
erstwhile Kansas.
The last installment of J. T. Bristow’s fascinating tale of the career
of Green Campbell is a fine piece of writing. We have heard many
commendable expressions on this biographical sketch. . . . The author,
J. T. Bristow, is a resident of Wetmore, a former newspaperman,
well known to many of our citizens. That he is a good writer is the
conviction of all.
—WILL T. BECK, Holton Recorder, neighbor, had spelled defeat for him in
the most sacred phase of human life.
In that flash I glimpsed too a stretch of rich rolling Kansas prairie
lined with streams of running water and a healthy growth of timber,
in the center of which, down by the timber’s edge, was once this man’s
place of abode, and which was then, and still is, but a few miles from
my own home. And I saw a wrecked home; a court house thronged with
curious people; and a lonely woman, a distraught wife and mother of a
little boy, fighting desperately for her freedom—and alimony.
The scene is now in Kansas. It will shift back and forth between here —
meaning, roughly, Wetmore, from which place this writing issues—and the
old mining West again and again as this narrative unfolds.
THE CHERRYVALE ICE CO.
Watkins Brothers, Prop’s
CHERRYVALE, KANSAS
Feby. 17, 1939.
Jno. T. Bristow, Esq., Wetmore, Kans.
Dear Friend John:
“Memory’s Store-House Unlocked,” by J. T. Bristow, appearing in the
Wetmore Spectator, came to me through the mail recently and I sure
enjoyed reading it more than anything I have read in some time.
Having attended the Campbell University and knowing personally many of
the characters in your article makes it of unusual interest and I wish
to congratulate you for writing such an interesting historic record and
thank you for the copy sent me.
Sincerely yours,
F. M. Watkins
Among the emigrants from the East during the early settlement of the
Sunflower state, were John and Green Campbell. Tall, stalwart young men
they were. Green was then twenty-two years old. John was a few years
older. With their sisters, Caroline and Sally Ann, and their mother,
Ruth Campbell, born in North Carolina in 1803, they came to Nemaha
county by ox-team in a covered wagon from down around Springfield,
Missouri, in 1856. Their father, James Campbell, had died in Missouri.
Passing up smooth high lands, the brothers selected adjoining claims in
the breaks of upper Elk creek, section thirty, Wetmore township. This
selection of rather rough lands was influenced no doubt by the presence
of some timber and a spring of “living” water—two indispensable
requisites of the pioneer farmer. Then, too, they might have entertained
the notion of becoming cattle barons. Many of the early comers had
such dreams. Here was the ideal location. Here they would have few
neighbors—and unlimited free range.
Goodsprings, Nevada, February 12, 1939.
Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas.
Dear Sir:
I want to thank you for the copies of the Wetmore Spectator which you
sent to me, which carry the life of father. Frank Williams had already
given me one issue, which I have loaned to several of father’s friends,
a few of whom are still alive. The new copies will be treasured by my
brother, my sister, and myself.
Father died while I was still so young that I have been able to retain
but few memories of him. However, I have gathered so many impressions
from friends who knew him well, not to mention mother, that I feel that
I have gained quite a true picture of him. In this connection it seems
to me that your life of him is not only accurate, in its main for I know
this to be true features, but that it goes deeper, and gives some
of the spirit that animated him. And particularly do I like your last
paragraph, and your reference “. . . . in whose heart there seems to
have burned an inextinguishable desire for something that never came.”;
Sincerely yours,
Byram C. Campbell
In that same year, 1856, Isaiah Thomas, with his family, came here from
Newton, Iowa. He had traveled all the way from Indiana to Iowa, thence
here, with ox-team and covered wagon. Custom and bovine traits had
caused him to walk alongside his oxen for practically all those wearying
miles. Isaiah Thomas settled on a quarter of land north of that taken up
by Green Campbell. His eldest boy, Elwood, was a lad of fifteen years,
seven years younger than Green Campbell. The destinies of these
two young men were to be subsequently linked together in gigantic
enterprises in a still newer frontier environment.
Times were close for the Campbells. They were compelled, as were many
early Kansas settlers, to pick up here and there a few extra dollars,
as opportunity offered, while becoming established on the farm. Green
Campbell found employment with the freighting firm of Russell, Majors,
and Waddell, at Leavenworth. His work took him often into the West.
When the Cherry creek gold excitement on the east slope of the Rocky
mountains broke out in 1858, he joined the throngs in that mad rush.
He cleaned up $60,000 from the placer mines, but had spent most of it
before coming back to his homestead.
Then for a while Green worked his land while the boy Elwood grew up.
Elwood was not to come into the picture, the gigantic doings, for some
years yet. In the meantime his father, Isaiah Thomas, had gone to the
war and had died in Arkansas. His mother, Martha Thomas, with her family
of seven children, had moved over to the north part of the township and
settled on forty acres a quarter mile east of Wetmore, which place has
been, until a few months ago, the home of her son, Manning. Unmarried,
and the last of that pioneer family, he died May 12, 1938. Though very
young, Elwood Thomas also joined the Union ranks and was held prisoner
of war at Tyler, Texas, for nearly a year. Shortly after returning
from the war, he married Maria Adamson, of Holton. They had four
children—three girls and a boy. Charley, the son, died at Beatty,
Nevada, in August last year.
Five years after his first mining venture, in 1863, Green Campbell was
again panning gold at Bannock, Montana. His take this time was $40,000.
Then, after one more desultory try on the farm, he married Florence
Oursler, of Circleville, in 1867. She was the daughter of Rufus Oursler,
wealthy resident of Jackson County. She was a beautiful woman.
For a few years contentment reigned in the Campbell home. I remember
going with my Uncle Nick Bristow one time when he visited in that home.
We went in a covered wagon, a wagon that was little more than a ghost of
the old “prairie schooner,” having all five of the bows still in place,
with a tattered canvas over only the rear half. But my uncle walked all
the way alongside his nigh ox. Uncle had a “log-wagon” for heavy hauling
on the farm. He kept this one for special occasions and Sunday driving.
He owned no horses.
Uncle Nick and Green Campbell had mined together in the Cherry creek
diggings—and the fact that his host of the day had cleaned up big, while
he himself brought home only alibis, and a cougar pelt, had not impaired
a fine friendship. Conscious of Mr. Campbell’s mine-made money, it then
seemed to me, a youngster, that the Campbells had everything—even a
“hired” girl. That girl was Elizabeth Dittman, now Mrs. Ed. Keggin,
living in Wetmore, who would tell you that everything was fine and
lovely with them then, as it had every reason to be.
Then rumor of a new mining strike in the West changed everything. Green
Campbell now found life irksome on his then none too productive acres
down on the banks of Elk creek. And as he turned over the soil with
his plow on a bright May day in 1871, he also turned things over in his
mind. His brother John, he decided, could remain on the farm and keep up
the fight against odds if he wanted to, but as for himself the Far West
was calling. That call had struck the man of my story with all the force
of a Kansas tornado, and it moved him from his anchorage on the farm
with a suddenness that brought a protest from his relatives.
So it was that Green Campbell, with his family now shifted to
Circleville, the home of his in-laws, went out again in quest of a third
fortune. And though millions came into his coffers, one cannot be sure,
after all these years and in the light of what followed, whether he
profited or lost by that abrupt decision back here on that bright May
morning sixty and seven years ago.
They called him a tenderfoot when he reached the end of the trail which
led out into a sand-blown waste two hundred miles and more beyond rail
transportation. Here, on the east slope of the San Francisco mountains,
in southwest Utah—about thirty miles from Milford, on the San Pedro
line—this man from the plains country, ripe for more adventure, was to
have a try for a third mining fortune. It was his first hard-rock mining
venture.
Green Campbell got the gold all right—millions of it — and distinguished
himself by developing one of the greatest silver mines of the age. But
that is only part of the story.
The great fortune was won by so close a margin that it hurt. Then there
was, to some extent, the usual anti-climax — spiced with complicated
domestic relations, growing out of an improvident situation.
But the name “tenderfoot,” as applied to Green Campbell, was not quite
right. He had already taken $100,000 from the placers; certainly enough
to lift him out of that classification. Even so, granting that he was
a seasoned miner at the time he entered the Utah field, Green Campbell
did, however, slip just a trifle.
The erroneous application of that appellation came about through a
little misjudgment of the waters of that desert country—springs they are
called. But the springs in that section, as in all other desert country,
with few exceptions, are not the bubbling, sparkling, steady flow of
waters generally visualized with the mention of springs. Rather, in most
instances, they are only seepages of water which must be collected in
ground reservoirs through a system of trenching the earth. Some of those
springs supply what is termed on the desert as sweet water, while other
springs—those issuing from volcanic rocks—are brackish and unfit for
domestic use, or for steaming purposes. The first spring developed by
Green Campbell was of the latter class.
Thus it was that when in later years Green Campbell went over into
Nevada to establish a new camp, he first had the waters analyzed by a
chemist, then very appropriately named his new camp Goodsprings. And
it so remains on the map today—a gold, silver-lead-zinc, and vanadium
mining camp down among the gentle slopes of the Spring mountain range
in southern Nevada. The next two camps established by Green Campbell,
in California, were named Vanderbilt and Providence. We may be sure the
water there was good also.
Here, I want to interrupt my story to say that it was at Goodsprings
where the writer was, some thirty-odd years ago, initiated into the
mining game along with Campbell followers, and where much of the
material for this narrative was picked up, first-hand. Here at
Goodsprings were Elwood Thomas and his nephew, Frank Williams. Elwood
Thomas had been Green Campbell’s right-hand man all through the latter’s
colorful mining career, having gone out from the old home town in Kansas
to join him in 1873. Frank Williams went direct from Wetmore to Mr.
Campbell, at the age of twenty-one, and has spent forty-seven of his
sixty-eight years on the Nevada desert. And perhaps I should say here
that much of the information presented in this narrative was obtained
from Mr. Thomas and Mr. Williams.
In the Utah field, then a new and isolated country, under conditions
that tested the fiber of the man, Green Campbell prospected the hills
of Beaver county for a while. Then, nearly five years later, his big
opportunity came when he secured an option on a mining claim for which
he agreed to pay $25,000. That claim was later developed into the famous
Horn Silver mine, which, up to the time of my last visit nearly thirty
years ago, had produced slightly in excess of twenty million dollars.
The mine, owned now by New York interests, is still producing at great
depth. Few metal mines there are that have had such long run of life.
But, as I have already stated, chance played a big hand in this game of
millions. At that time Green Campbell had all his funds tied up in other
properties. He was then operating the Hickory mine at Newhouse. Green
Campbell turned to his friend, August Byram, of Atchison, Kansas, for
financial assistance. Byram and Campbell had become acquainted while
they were both in the employ of that major freighting firm. Byram had
already spent some money at the suggestion of Campbell without results,
in the Star district, close by. After considerable correspondence, Byram
decided to take another chance at the game, promising to come through
with the funds to take over the Horn Silver claim before the expiration
of the ninety-day option. Byram was to advance the full amount, half
of it as a loan to Campbell, and they were to own the property on a
fifty-fifty basis.
But here caution stepped in and robbed those two men of exactly one-half
of an immense fortune—a fortune in the making. After the agreement had
been made Byram wrote and asked Campbell to see if he could find someone
to take a quarter interest in the risk. Campbell found two men, Matt
Cullen and Dennis Ryan, who would come in for a quarter interest. But
Byram still thought he was taking too great a chance, and wrote a
second time asking Campbell to try induce those two men to take a half
interest. It was so arranged.
Green Campbell then settled down to a game of waiting. Thoroughly imbued
with the spirit of the times, he told himself—and rightly, too—that he
had only to await the coming of Byram to jump in and win. But, without
further word from Byram and the final day of the option drawing near, he
became very nervous. New developments had caused the owners to look for
some chance to void the option, and Campbell sensed danger in delay.
Then came the awful blow that set all his emotions to working at high
speed.
August Byram, on his way out to the mine, had stopped over in Salt Lake
City and there he was discouraged by designing individuals who wanted
to pluck the mine for themselves. Developments had increased, its
value fourfold. But this fact was kept from Byram by his Salt Lake
acquaintances—indeed, they stressed the fact that the claim had but
recently been optioned for $1,500, and that the option had been allowed
to lapse. The result was August sent word to Green that he would have
nothing more to do with it.
However, Campbell managed somehow to get Byram over to the property on
the last day of the option, but up to the eleventh hour he was filled
to the brim with nerve-wracking suspense. For hours he had kept his gaze
constantly fixed on the sage-fringed road leading out across the broad
valley to the east, where was open to the eye a twenty mile sweep of
sun-baked waste, looking for that distant dust cloud which might mean
that relief for his tired nerves was on the way. Then, late in the
afternoon, as the last golden tints lingered along the ragged edges
of the mountains, the stage bearing Byram, full four hours late, was
sighted far out on the road—a mere speck in a great cloud of dust.
There was yet time for speedy action. For a brief ten minutes the two
men faced each other—Campbell full of words, Byram deep in meditation.
It could hardly be expected that after floundering in a bog of
indecision and doubt for so long, that understanding would come to Byram
in a flash. But Campbell’s great anxiety in the matter caused him to
believe, for the moment, that Byram’s resolutions were still wavering,
while his own thoughts whirled like leaves in an autumn blast. Byram’s
final words, however, kept Campbell’s spirits from suffering further.
I was not there at that particular time, of course, but this minute
accounting, the reactions of those men, is as I caught it from Elwood
Thomas. “If it hadn’t been such a serious matter with Green,” said
Elwood, amid chuckles that sent ripples all over the old miner’s
weathered face, “it would have been downright amusing.”
The transfer of the Horn Silver claim took place in the shadow of the
mountain as the sun dropped out of sight on February 17, 1876. And it
was a joyous occasion for the little group of interested men—except,
possibly, the two original locators who were now beginning to realize
the true worth of that little piece of ground. Fate dealt a mean hand to
the locators of the Horn Silver claim. After sinking a shaft thirty
feet on ore, Samuel Hawkes and James Ryan bartered away millions on the
belief that the ore would not last.
And I might say here that the Horn Silver lode, the main ore body, was
found by sheer accident. Jimmy Calvering, a young Irishman employed to
do the location work, following the custom of the shiftless miner, went
away a considerable distance from the outcrop to find “soft ground”
in which to dig his ten-foot hole, as required by law. Jimmy was not
looking for ore, but in doing that ten foot of work he opened up the
main lode. And nowhere else did it come that near the surface. Jimmy was
ever after that proclaimed “A man with a great nose for ore.”
The Horn Silver mine was operated by Campbell, Cullen & Co., for three
years, with a gross production of nearly three million dollars. The mine
was then sold in 1879 for six million dollars, and title passed to the
Horn Silver Mining Co. An interest equivalent to about one-sixth of the
mine previously had been given to an eastern promoter for securing a
railroad to the mine.
Green Campbell had other interests at Frisco, the camp which had sprung
up about the Horn Silver mine. It was a town peopled with all kinds
of characters known to frontier life. It had all the mining-camp
trappings—dance halls, saloons, and what not. This camp had caught the
overflow from the older mining camp of Pioche, in Nevada, where the
boast was, “A man for breakfast every morning!” And in lawlessness
Frisco flourished like the green bay tree! Life at the high tide was
almost as cheap as water! But Green Campbell’s personality was such as
to keep him out of harm’s way. Green was a good mixer. He drank some,
but in moderation. In no sense was he a dissipated man. And here at
Frisco he made more money! Lots of it! The Carbonate mine alone gave
him five hundred thousand dollars in profits! He was classed with other
mining moguls of that day. Hearst, Tabor, Walsh—he knew them all.
Green Campbell’s rise in the financial world was spectacular. Within the
brief span of a few years he could have returned to his old home and
to his family with enough money to live in luxury. But friend Green had
other notions. Like the noble beast of burden of the Sahara bearing his
name, Campbell was now a permanent fixture of the desert.
Man’s ambition is seldom satisfied. Visions of greater wealth and the
thrills that go with the making held Green Campbell with a vise-like
grip. He willed to stay in the West.
His wife preferred to stay in Kansas with her people, at Circleville.
Or, maybe, it was decided that the untamed West, the desert with its
sizzling summer suns and unbridled winds, was no place for Florence
Oursler Campbell and her little boy Charley. Anyhow the situation
brought about an estrangement and, finally, a separation. Ofttimes men,
too much absorbed in chasing the pot of gold, unconsciously make this
supreme sacrifice.
Clouds began to appear on Green Campbell’s marital horizon soon after he
went West, but the storm did not break until he was virtually in the
big money. He was enormously engrossed with his mining operations,
while back here at home, because of his continued absence, a growing
resentment was piling up against him day by day. The time was coming, if
he would see it, when he must give up either his mines, or his family.
He heeded not the signals, seriously. Like his royal highness across the
Atlantic—the self-deposed king—until disaster was upon him, he proposed
to keep them both.
Florence Campbell filed her petition for divorce and alimony in the
Jackson County court at Holton. Case Broderick of Holton and Judge
Stillings of Leavenworth were her attorneys. Green Campbell was
represented by Hayden & Hayden of Holton and Colonel Everest of
Atchison. The stage was set for a spirited legal battle. The whole
country buzzed with gossip. Because of the prominence of the Campbells
and the Ourslers people traveled for miles on horseback and in wagons to
attend the hearings.
The plaintiff and her witnesses occupied the stage for a day and a half.
Then the defense attorneys armed with depositions and a liberal line-up
of witnesses, told the court what they had up their sleeves. But the
judge, being somewhat of a sleuth, had already detected that something
was wrong with the plaintiff’s legal machinery. Gears didn’t mesh. The
charge was out of alignment with the facts as adduced by the
plaintiff and her own witnesses. In short, her lawyers had experienced
embarrassment in their endeavor to twist a prolonged absence from
Campbell’s fireside — and whatever else that was offered—into “extreme
cruelty.”
There had to be a “charge,” to be sure, but it would appear that the
plaintiff’s attorneys might have more profitably selected for their
client, out of their cabinet of ready-made complaints, something more
reasonable, something less galling to the fine sensibilities of the man.
Judge John T. Morton said that inasmuch as the plaintiff had failed to
prove her case, defense testimony would not be heard. Moreover, he said
Mrs. Campbell would get no alimony.
There was not, as one might suspect, another man in the case—not a
breath of scandal. Mrs. Campbell was too fine for that. It was her
unalterable conviction that she and her child were being unduly
neglected. It was “blue” blood in revolt—indignant, regrettable
rebellion.