The Goldfield news. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1904-1911, 1905-12-22

From the shores of the Pacific came
the half-mad cry of, "Gold, gold, gold
gold for every man-power AMI
plenty-a chance for the poorest man,
of all the earth" Thrice round the
world it rang, and from the farm and
the factory leaped the American master
builder, and forged his way to its hid
ing place, and there built up a common.
wealth second to lone in the land IN
half a century. Today it does not i'm
press them as a thing of magnitude,
for it is too commonplace to them. They
see it every day. 1t is to the traveller
that these things are impressive. In
London one sees houses three centuries
old; in Germany castles towering above
some moonlit crag in which knights
and ladies once made merry; in the
Orient M upon temples older
than the Christian era; in the west one
comes upon a progressive, self-support-
ing people risen from n~othingness and
oblivion, their homes reared upon a
desert, a people with all their dreams
fulfilled in less time than it took the
European or the Oriental to place the
roof upon n of his temples.
1t is of this realm and of this type
of nan that Nevada was born. Moth
ing was too difficult, nowhere was de
feat nor fear written upon their faces,
from mountain chain to mountain chain
they silently carved their future and
raised their state to a superior position
IN the nation. We have chosen to call
this viewpoint of Nevada's life the
Romance of Nevada, and to all who are
familiar with it's history romance will
appeal as a fitting term, we are firmly
convinced.
some of these hardy men who brought
it to the attention of the rest of the
land. From the southland came the
Spanish padre, searching for a site to
rear his adobe mission walls; from the
northland came the trapper in search
of game. dissatisfied with its agricul-
tural and productive possibilities, the
Spaniard withdrew. Not so with the
American. We have Fremont travers-
ing the territory many times, coming
from the southwark and again from
Oregon and entering it from the north
ward. Fremont made maps of the
country and spoke of it to others 81
glowingly that curiosity took posses
sion of several men, and they also brav-
ed it's wilderness, and saw with their
own eyes that he had spoken truthfully
of it's natural beauty and it's future
possibilities. That these things are
real is a well known act to all his
t~orians. At Plymouth they show you
a rock; in Smoky Valley (In Nevada)
they have another. Upon it is carved
Fremont s name. The spanning of the
continent, however, is the true monu-
ment. This interminable distance
which even the modern express train
labors against for a full week is the
real and genuine monument to the life
which the Mayfower carried in he-
precious hold.
When California announced to the
world that her hillsides and mountain
streams were bathed in precious gold,
the migration of adventure became a
part of our national life. So well
known is it's history that it would but
be needless repetition to speak of 1t
here. Only that phase of it which con-
Germs Nevada is of interest to us at the
moment. California was reached
either by sailing ships around Cape
Horn, by transfer across the Isthmus
of Panama and voyage up the Pacific
coast, or by the overland trail across
an absolute wilderness. That the over
land trail where it crossed what is now
Nevada was then an absolute wilder
ness is evidenced by even the slightest
knowledge of it's topography and
geology, or best of all, by the brief and
stirring records written by the men
who crossed it.
just at this time Mormon domina-
ton claimed all Of it's land, and upon
the fast increasing hoof prints and be-
side the ever growing wagon track they
set up trading stations, reaching OUT
over the desert. In 1851 Genoa, in a
beautiful valley at the base of the Sier-
ras, had become quite a settlement. 1t
was here that travel worn end weary,
the overland pioneer rested before the
ascent of the snow capped m~untalns.
Records, however, are so brief in their
descriptive lore as to fail to give a
very good word picture of the commun'
ity. Striking of az right angles from
I'll -, a t.tt1a aonnr known