page_title: Comstock Lode
section_title: Grosh brothers
hierarchical_section_title: Comstock Lode / Discovery of silver / Grosh brothers
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: "Seven Comstock miners." Image Date: Ca. 1880s Summary/Description: Caption on image: "To Labor is to Pray." Frances S. Osgood. Photograph of seven men, Comstock miners, two holding lanterns; from the Alfred Doten collection; cyanotype Subject: Miners-Nevada-Comstock Mines and mineral resources-Nevada-Comstock Location: Comstock (historical) (Nev.) Storey County, Nevada CollectionSpecial Collections Photos Image NumberUNRS-P0192 Source:Special Collections Department, University of Nevada, Reno Library URL: http://contentdm.library.unr.edu/u?/spphotos,593
context_page_description: The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada, which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States and named after American miner Henry Comstock.
  After the discovery was made public in 1859, it sparked a silver rush of prospectors to the area, scrambling to stake their claims. The discovery caused considerable excitement in California and throughout the United States, the greatest since the California Gold Rush in 1849. Mining camps soon thrived in the vicinity, which became bustling commercial centers, including Virginia City and Gold Hill.
  The Comstock Lode is notable not just for the immense fortunes it generated and the large role those fortunes had in the growth of Nevada and San Francisco, but also for the advances in mining technology that it spurred, such as square set timbering and the Washoe process for extracting silver from ore. The mines declined after 1874, although underground mining continued sporadically into the 1920s.
context_section_description: Credit for the discovery of the Comstock Lode is disputed. It is said to have been discovered, in 1857, by Ethan Allen Grosh and Hosea Ballou Grosh, sons of a Pennsylvania clergyman, trained mineralogists and veterans of the California gold fields. Hosea injured his foot and died of sepsis in 1857. In an effort to raise funds, Allen, accompanied by an associate, Richard Maurice Bucke, set out on a trek to California with samples and maps of his claim.
  Henry Comstock was left in their stead to care for the Grosh cabin and a locked chest containing silver and gold ore samples and documents of the discovery. Grosh and Bucke never made it to California. They suffered from frostbite while crossing the Sierra Nevada, and lost limbs by amputation in a last-ditch effort to save their lives. Allen Grosh died on December 19, 1857. R.M. Bucke lived, but upon his recovery returned to his home in Canada.
  When Henry T. P. Comstock learned of the death of the Grosh brothers, he claimed the cabin and the lands as his own. He also examined the contents of the trunk but thought nothing of the documents as he was not an educated man. What he did know is that the gold and the silver ore samples were from the same vein. He continued to seek out diggings of local miners working in the area, as he knew the Grosh brothers' find was still unclaimed. Upon learning of a strike on Gold Hill which uncovered some bluish rock (silver ore), Comstock immediately filed for an unclaimed tract directly adjacent to this area.
caption: Comstock miners, 1880s. Caption on original: "To Labor is to Pray."
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