The Washington times., 1921-08-07
Fashionably ALFRED
Senator Was Miner IN
Nevada Desert Land
BY J. BERT CAMPBELL.
lnterna tionaI News Service.


"A tall. angular, bald-headed. pink
checked. youthful.looking man sits
erect at his desk In one corner OF
the Senate Chamber. He is i'm
maculately attired in garments OF
fashionable cut. He seldom utters
syllable in body where speech max
ing Is the rule and silence the ex-
ception. Pinc-nez are carefully bal
anced upon his nose. His nails are
freshly manicured. his collar md
te-perfection.
one OF the irreverent in the CALLER
les. Looks as though he had a
flock Of Wallets. and belonged to the
'Millionaire's Club"
The dude chances to be Tasker
Lowndes Oddie, the new Republican
Senator from Nevada, ex-cow punch
er and ex-gold miner who under
went all sorts of ehardships and pri
vations, and toiled long in q hard
listed practical way before good for
tune slipped him in the soft snap"
Of a Senatorial seat.
Born in Brooklyn.
oddie was shunted westward after
being born In Brooklyn, N. Y. Oc-
tober "a, 1870, and spending his
early boyhood at East Orange, ".
]. He roughed II on a ranch in
Nebraska from sixteen to nineteen
and then sought a business career
In New York city. In 1898 he went
to Nevada to identify himself with
the extensive Stokes mining interests
there, but he worked himself out
of Job by exposing Irregularities in
connection with them, and ne then
hit the trail into an almost inacces-
sible, sparsely inhabited. mountain
GUS region Of the southern part VI
the State.
oddie finally drifted south into
Nye county.
Meets Jim Butler.
He became acquainted with a man,
Jim Butler, who was to play an i'm
portant part In his life. Butler had
been district attorney--a Job with little
to do and less pay, in which Oddie sue
ceeded him rancher In q small way.
and prospector of the old school with
that gift that made the old timers ia
nous In their day. One day Butler
handed Oddie several samples from a
prospect he had found and told him
that the formation looked good. and
that II the samples ran anything at all
II would be worth explaining. Butler
had taken some samples from the find
to kondyke, nearby camp, and
shown them to Wilss Brougher and his
partner, Higgs. who had an assay Of
flee there. Higgs threw them aside as
not being worth an assay. Butler, who
was broke" proposed that Oddie have
the samples assayed.
II the stuff is any good, I'll put
you In on the locations" quoth Butler.
Oddie was in the same financial con-
dition as Butler, but ne had In Austin
a friend, w. c. Gayheart, an assayer,
to whom he sent the samples. In a
letter to Gayheart he repeated Buffers
offer and proposed to put Gayheart in
on his interest should the assays show
values worth while.
Found the Great MizpAh Mine.
There were eight samples in the lot
and in due time the certificate came
The lowest ran $50 per ton in silver.
the highest $500. They were from an
outcrop on what later became known
to the mining world as the Mizpah
mine in the great silver camp of Tono-
pah, then a barren waste in a little
frequented part of Nye county.
Butler, in the meantime. had gone
to his ranch. Oddie sent the assay
certificate and urged him to make
haste to Belmont and go with Oddie
Buffers ranch was on a Star Route
postoffice, but he made infrequent
trips to the mailbox down on the road
The days rolled by and merged into
weeks, with no reply. Oddis greatly
feared that some wandering prospectoi
would find the ledge and locate It
while waiting to hear from Butler.
Finally Butler, unexcited by the as.
says, arrived with his wife In Belmont
and the two slipped away with camp
equipment loaded upon a rickety
wagon in which they made their fifty
mile journey. On Buffers return he
took Wise Brougher into the partner
ship also. The three men then started
for the scene Of the discovery. where
they put up their claim monuments
and started to work.
The outcrop yielded two tons Of
ore and then "pinched" out. The men
then started to level off a place for
a windlass and in this work uncov-
cred the top Of the Mizpah ledge.
Initial Capital Was $25.
They hauled the ore first extracted,
one ton at time, to Belmont. long
two-days' trip, from where 1t was sent
ninety miles by wagon to Austin,
thence by rail to a smelter on the
Pacific coast. 1t took six weeks to
get returns, out the CneCk that came
for $500 cheered them in their task
and supplied the funds for grub"
Their later successes never produced
a sum that looked quite as big as that
$500. which came on a stormy day to
their dingy camp on a bleak hillside
In a lonely corner of the woEld. 1t
was almost dusk of a winter day
when Oddie reached camp with the
money. blue with cold, but warmed
within by visions of the future. Drop
ping the reins to the ground, he left
the tired horses standing and inpart-
ed the good news to his partners.
The combined money investment of
these three men in this enterprise
was s25. This is probably the worlds
record Of big returns from small in.
vestments.
What followed Is history. In the
mysterious way that news spreads of
new strike in the desert reaches, It
quickly became known that a great
discovery had been made in Nevada.
From everywhere came hardy spirits,
wEu5uSpEpIGTU5
Observation-Disclosures