White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1914-05-17
The University and
Diversity of Neuada
Rufus Steele in Sunset Magazine Tells Why
State Is Destined to Fulfill Prophecy
Of Land of the Certain Promise"

States hasn't come tumbling into
The desert, by the way. has lost
the brace of adjectives that thrilled
the class in geography half a genera
ton ago. The Great American
Desert-which came finally to mean
Nevada more than anything else
has been sponged off the map of
these United States. Water and gas
oline did it. Scientific exactness was
, the directing force. Mr.. Greeley put
a good deal of the awe into the awful
Great American Desert. Hank Monk
gave him a runaway ride around the
precipices in 1859 and he remember
ed 1t wildly whenever he took up his
pen to write a few reminiscent
columns for the New York Tribune.
Awful, with that stage ride left out.
meant nothing more than dryness and
remoteness. Water and gasoline are
getting closer day by day to the total
elimination of these qualities. Dry
ness was the bar to productivity of
the soil. The governments twelve
m~illion-dollar Truckee-carson pro-
ject was planned to provide irrigated
farms for ten thousand farmers and
to show a hundred thousand other
farmers what could be accomplished
nv copaarvino tho uafare IF rf.,arc
that ran a while and then disappeared
into the ground.
The automobile has proved itself
the gasoline camel that could eat up
the distance between desert water
holes. Recently the legislature at
Carson City nullifed a statute of
1875 that forbade citizens to allow
camels and dromedaries to run at
large. IL was after the Comstock
lode had been discovered in 1859 and
men all over the world we're asking
what was the quickest way to get to
Virginia City that congress under
took TO conquer the desert with
camels from the Sahara. The Civil
war brought sudden end to the
benevolent experiment, ever though
1t was the Comstock's gold and sill
yer flood that kept the bark of ma
tional credit afloat in those troubl-
GUS times. When in 1901. news of
a fabulous metal strike in Nevada
again quickened the pulse of the
whole world. the gasoline camel had
come into common use and the water
less roads were instantly stripped of
their ancient terror and fatigue.
The automobile brought the new min
ing camp in the farthest canyon
within a days travel of the railroad;
il whisked the sick TO the hospital: 1t
ran with food TO the hungry. The
auto became "A development factor
not second even to irrigation. II
drove danger clean out of the desert.
Today ID Is the burro of the prospec.
tor, the freight schooner of the mine
operator, the vain of the farmer. the
bronco of the eow-man save only
when he has roping to do. Ii is the
vital spark carrying life to the utter
corners of the sage. What spot can
remain lonely or impossible when ii
is but hours distant from a candy
store, a doctor, a church, or a mo-
tion-picture theater where are shown
the zippingest frontier dramas fresh
from the film factories of Chicago?
Yet the ditch and the devil-wagon
have not slashed out that absorbing
interest that the primitive holds for
every red-blooded human. The pic
turesque has been made accessible;
IL has not been destroyed. There Is
not the slightest doubt that the
bitches and the devil-wagon have
transformed Nevada. while the coun-
try was asleep to what was going on.
an accessible region fuller than Wall
street of business possibilities. fuller
than a rubber factory of the expan-
sion American young men crave, and
fuller than the Arctic Circle of North
Poles eager to be discovered. The
people of the United States haven't
got around to the news yet. The
people of Nevada have not waited
for strangers to tell them.
The Mackay School of Mines
would he of interest IL only because
1t preserves the traditions of mineral
discoveries that electrified the world.
OF much more Importance is the fact
that Il is training with scientific ex-
actness young men who may go into
the still UNEMPLOYED Nevada hills and
make new mineral discoveries as i'm
portant as those that have put the
spice into history. Theory and prac-