Gold was first discovered in this region in the spring of 1850. It was
found in what is now known as Gold Canyon, by a company of Mormon
emigrants _en route_ to California. Having arrived too early to cross
the Sierras, they encamped on the Carson River, where the town of Dayton
now stands, to await the melting away of the snow on the mountains. To
while away the time some of the men of the party tried prospecting in a
large canyon that put into the river near their camp. They found gold in
the first pan of gravel they washed. Looking further they soon found
that certain bars and gravel banks afforded much richer pay dirt than
that first tried. They were able to make from $5.00 to $8.00 a day, but
left as soon as the mountains were passable, as they anticipated taking
out gold by the pound on reaching California. Other emigrants who
followed the Mormons did some mining in the canyon while camped on the
river. All made good wages, and one or two families stopped and went
regularly to work at mining. However, when the supply of water in the
canyon gave out toward the end of summer, they “pulled up stakes” and
crossed the mountains to California.
What was told of the mines on Gold Canyon by these emigrants induced
parties of miners working in and about Placerville to visit them. During
the winter and spring months, while there was water, these men were able
to make from half an ounce to an ounce a day. The camp had no permanent
population, however, until the winter and spring of 1852-53, when there
were over 200 men at work on the bars and gravel banks along the canyon,
with rockers, toms, and sluices.
As the gold found in the canyon came from quartz veins toward its head,
about Silver City and Gold Hill, these early miners were even then on
the track of the great Comstock Lode, but without once even suspecting
the existence of such a large and rich vein. The trading-post, or little
hamlet near the junction of the canyon and the Carson River, which at
first served as a base of supplies, was presently left far behind as the
miners worked their way up the stream from bar to bar, and they founded
a town of their own, on a plateau near the canyon, called Johntown. This
town was situated a short distance below where Silver City now stands,
and was then the “mining metropolis” of Western Utah. One dilapidated
stone chimney yet stands as a monument to mark the site of this now
ruined mining town.
Johntown constituted a center from which prospectors occasionally
scouted forth. These prospectors had no thought of anything except
placer mines—native gold in gravel deposits. In 1857 some of these
Johntown miners struck paying gravel in Six-mile Canyon. This canyon is
about five miles north of Gold Canyon, for the greater part of its
course, but the heads of the two canyons are only about a mile apart,
and both are on what is now known as the Comstock Lode. The pay found on
Six-mile Canyon began only about a mile below the massive croppings that
tower above the Comstock; still these early miners never once thought of
going up to the head of the ravine to look for and prospect the quartz
veins; all they thought of was free gold in deposits of earth and
gravel.
In January, 1859, James Finney, or Fennimore, better known by his
popular _soubriquet_ of “Old Virginia” (he being a native of the State
of Virginia), John Bishop, and a few others of the Johntown miners,
struck a rich deposit of free gold in placer diggings in a little hill
at the head of Gold Canyon. From this hill the town of Gold Hill derives
its name. These mines were so rich that most of the Johntown people
moved to them. The gold was in a deposit of decomposed quartz mingled
with soil, and the miners were really delving in a part of the Comstock
Lode without at first knowing that they were at work on any quartz vein.
These diggings yielded gold by the pound, at times.
In the spring of 1859 several Johntowners returned to the diggings they
had discovered on Six-mile Canyon two years before. With these men went
Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin, but finding all the paying ground
already claimed they went to the head of the canyon and began
prospecting on the slope of the mountain with a rocker, leading in a
small stream of water from a neighboring spring. They found but poor pay
in the light top dirt they were working (for there was no washed
gravel), and they had about concluded to abandon their claim when they
made the grand discovery of the age. They had sunk a small pit in which
to collect water for use in their rockers. It was deeper than they had
yet dug. Seeing in the bottom of this hole material of a different
appearance from any they had yet worked, they were tempted to try some
of it in their rocker. When a bucket of this dirt was rocked out, to
their great delight the two men saw that they had made a “strike.” The
whole apron of their rocker was covered with a layer of bright and
glittering gold.
In that little prospect hole, silver mining in America, as now known,
was born. At that moment the eyes of these two men, standing alone among
the sagebrush of the rugged mountain slope, rested upon the first of
many hundreds of millions in the two precious metals that have since
been taken out of the Comstock Lode; for in the rocker along with the
gold was a quantity of rich black sulphuret of silver. This “heavy black
stuff,” which not a little puzzled the two uneducated miners, was almost
pure silver. They thought it was some worthless base metal, and were
very sorry to see it, as it clogged their rocker and interfered with the
washing out of the fine gold-dust.
Henry Comstock.—Henry Thomas Paige Comstock, as he gave his name—has by
many persons been credited with the discovery of the Comstock, but it is
an honor to which he was not entitled. The credit of discovering silver
in Nevada belongs to Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin. The grand
discovery had been made several hours before Comstock knew of it. Toward
evening on the day the “find” was made, Comstock, who had been out
hunting his mustang, came to where the two men were at work. They were
taking out gold by the pound and decomposed silver ore by hundreds of
pounds. Comstock saw the gold and realized that a great strike had been
made. He instantly determined to have a share. He at once declared that
he had a claim upon the ground. He said he had located it some time
before, also the water of the spring. He so blustered about his rights
and so swaggered about what he could and would do that rather than have
any trouble the two quiet miners agreed to take him in and give him a
share of the mine.
No sooner had Comstock been made a partner in the mine than he placed
himself at the front in everything about it. He constituted himself
superintendent, did all the talking and none of the working, and was
always ready to tell strangers about the mine. When visitors came it was
always _my_ mine and _my_ everything. Thus people came to talk of
Comstock’s mine and Comstock’s vein; then it was the Comstock vein—as
persons making locations asserted that they were on the same vein as
Comstock, _i. e._, the Comstock vein—and in that way the name of
Comstock became fastened upon the whole lode. As the first claim was
called the Ophir, that would have been a more fitting name for the whole
vein than the one it now bears. For a long time Comstock no more
appreciated the heavy black material that accompanied the gold, and in
lumps of which much of the gold was embedded, than did O’Riley and
McLaughlin. It was not until returns had been received from samples of
it sent to California for assay that anyone in Nevada knew that the
“heavy black stuff” was almost pure silver.