The silver state news. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1907-1909, 1908-05-14
MINING IN
EARLY DAYS

There is always much of human in
terest in the story Of the boom min
ing camp, where money is free and for
tunes made in a day. The follow
ing from the en- Of C. C. Goodwin tells
of that kind of times in the history
of Virginia City:
The men who discovered the Com
stock were dull souls and they were
lowly and. poor.
The canyons that run down from the
Comstock to the Carson river, one to
the east and one to the southeast,
each carrying a little stream of it's
own, had gold in their banks. These
miners for two or three years had been
mining in these r~avines. They had
the thought that it was gravel that
they were working. The fact that the
gold which they found was worth only
from $11 to $13 an ounce never awak-
oned a thought in their minds; they
knew that there was some alloy mix
ed with the gold, but they never had
the enterprise to have an assay made
of the gold to find out what the al
10y was. That it was possible that
it might have come down from a ledge
above never entered their minds. But
really what they were doing was sim
ply mining in the decomposed rock
that had crumbled from the great lode
and had been distributed down the
canyon by the waters. One little
group were working in Gold Canyon
and another in East Canyon The fact
that their diggings grew richer as they
assembled the mountain never excited
any suspicion in them. Their eyes were
darkened. That they were in the
SHADOW of the greatest of mines never
crossed their visions, no more than
it did the emigrants, who in crossing
the plains raised their weary eyes to
those dark hilltops and wondered why
they were ever formed. But the time
was ripe for this discovery The pla-
ecrs of California had been pretty
well worked out, that it as far as men
could work with rockers and s%luices.
A great wild-goose chase had been
made to Frazier creek in the hopes
o finding new placer ground, and Of
the thousands who went there nearly
all returned destitute and in despair.
1t was time for something new to be
found. So those placer miners in June
& 1859, in the IL Mile ravine OF East
Canyon, one day found what they
thought was a marvellous pocket of
gravel, and for several years they took
out fabulous sums in their rockers, and
they traced the outline of what they
though was their placer claim and To-.
Gated it as a placer claim. In fact,
even then they were on the outcrop-
pings of the famous Ophir NINE. am,
the rich gravel which they were work.
ing was merely decomposed rock from
the great lode.
About the same time the minrs al
work in Gold Canyon also found rich
gravel as they thought and the deposit
from which the gravel had come. and
located it as a placer claim. The bare
truth was that they were working the
rock from the groupings from great
Gold Hill. -
The man who made the dicovery
of Gold Hill was John Bishop and his
partner (name unknown), "Oold Vir-
ginia,' a kindly eccentric old chap,
whose real name was Fennemore, and
a fourth man whose name is lost. cold
Virginia. vas the man after whom
Virginia City was named. Their dis
covery was on the both day of June,
1899, almost the same day that Peter
Riley and Patrick Mclaughlin locat-
ed their claim, now the Ophir.. High
er up the hill from where O'Riley and
Mclaughlin were working, two men,
Henry Comstock and Emanuel Penrod
owned nine-tenths of the stream run
ming down Clear r%avine, which sup
piled the rockers with water. When
O'Riley and Mclaughlin showed sam.
pies of what they were washing, Com
stock told them that they had certain
ly struck it rich, but informed them
Old Virginia., Peter Eennex Ioe Cur