Tag: comstock

Chronicles of the Comstock, The beginnings of the Comstock:

As the prospectors and early miners were following the old California Trail through Nevada on their way to the California Gold Rush in 1849, a few of them stopped to camp along a small stream running into the Carson River where the town of Dayton now stands. Eager to try their skill at panning for gold, some of them were able to pan out a few flecks of color from the stream. Convinced that this was just a taste of what they would find when they reached the "real" gold fields in California, they pushed on over the Sierras.

On a pleasant day in May 1850, a wagon train from Salt Lake City halted for a few days' rest at the same location. It, too, camped among the willows and tall cottonwood trees.

Dennis Cassinelli's Chronicles of the Comstock today has the story of The fabulous Crown Point Trestle. The Crown Point Trestle was a large wooden trestle that carried the V&T Railroad over a ravine in Gold Hill. It was built in 1869 as part of the first phase of the railroad, and was the highest and longest trestle on the whole line. The story goes that connecting trains from San Francisco refused to let their passenger cars cross the trestle, so passengers would have to disembark in lower Gold Hill and take a wagon the rest of the way into Virginia City. It was this way until George Pullman himself, the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, visited the Comstock and proclaimed the trestle worthy of carrying his cars.

In the end it was not calamity that brought the Crown Point Trestle down, it was mining. Renewed mining activity in the 1930s led to the Crown Point Ravine being filled in, so the trestle was dismantled, the ravine filled, and new tracks laid right on the dirt in 1936. Those same tracks were pulled up just a couple of years later, though, as the line from Carson to Virginia was abandoned in 1938. It wouldn't be until the 1990s when iron rail would once again touch this ground, this time coming down from Virginia City as part of Bob Gray's revival railroad. When the line was extended to Gold Hill in 1991, the end of the line was right at the edge of the old Crown Point Ravine. And that remained the end of the line until 2005, when the modern reconstruction effort was started, and the rails once again headed south from Gold Hill. The groundbreaking ceremony that was held in April of that year took place on top of the filled in ravine, and now tracks once again cross the ravine, although the trestle did not make a comeback.

Dennis Cassinelli in Chronicles of the Comstock looks back at the big underground fire in the Yellowjacket Mine in Gold Hill, on April 7, 1869.

Later: And also, on a related topic, today he writes about the square-set timbering system that supported those Comstock mines, and that burned so hungrily in the Yellowjacket Fire.

You may have thought that mining on the Comstock stopped decades ago. And it is true that the big boom, the "Big Bonanza" as it was called, petered out around 1880, and after that Virginia City started its slide towards being a ghost town. And the rebirth the town has seen lately has only been because of tourism.

But that doesn't mean all mining stopped. During the 20th century, small mining operations continued as ore extraction technology got better and better. The largest evidence of this are the several open pits that are in the area. Those pits were dug about 50 years ago by companies looking for gold and silver. Rather than having to find a vein and follow it, like the hard rock miners of old, they just scooped up dirt by the bucketful and processed it all. As long as the price of gold stayed high, they could make a profit doing this.

Now that the price of gold is back up, hitting record highs this year, companies are investing in the Comstock more. Which brings us to this story, where a mining company is working in Gold Canyon between Silver City and Gold Hill, and they've found a good spot to dig. The problem is, it's right underneath the highway. So the company is proposing to move the highway a bit to the west, so they can have free reign to dig up all the gold they can get at.

Now, realigning the highway is going to take some time. Their estimates are a year, between negotiating with NDOT, engineering the new road, and actually doing construction. And who knows, gold prices have been dropping for several months, so maybe by the time they're ready to move the road it won't be worth it anymore. But it's an interesting reminder that the Comstock is not dead, and never will be as long as there's one flake of gold or silver left in the ground.

Dennis Cassinelli's latest online article is titled Timber for the Comstock, and it covers the history of logging and timbering in Western Nevada in the 1800s. Virginia City gobbled up huge amounts of wood, both to build the buildings above ground, and to shore up the mines underground. As the riches of the Comstock were realized and increasing numbers of people swarmed the slopes of Mount Davidson, the lumber needs grew exponentially. Early miners were able to get by with cutting down the few native trees that grew on the Comstock, and using them to build simple shacks. But by the time the rush began all those trees had been wiped out, prompting the pioneers to look to the endless forests of the Sierra Nevada.

This brought up the question, though, of how to get the trees from the mountains to Virginia City. At first the loggers used the one natural tool they had been given, the Carson River. Trees were felled along the banks of the river in Alpine County, and floated all the way down to Empire City, where Dutch Nick built a mill to cut the logs into lumber. Other mills along the river soon followed. The wood then had to be hauled up the hill to Virginia City by wagon.

The cost and hassle of hauling the wood with large teams of oxen soon led to the first upgrade in the process; a railroad was built between Carson and Virginia, specifically for the purpose of hauling wood up and ore down, putting the wagons and teamsters out of business. The wood drives on the river soon became a thing of the past too, as most of the trees along the banks of the river had been cut down. So then they started cutting the trees at Lake Tahoe, and sending the logs rocketing downhill in a "V" flume. The largest of these operations was set up by Duane Bliss at Spooner Summit, with the flume following the present-day Hwy 50 down the hill and into Carson City. There the logs would be picked up by train to finish their journey.

By the end of the 19th century, nearly all the trees at Lake Tahoe had been chopped down. Which was fine, because Virginia City had run out of gold and silver so there was no more demand for lumber like in the old days. The mills were silenced and the flumes dismantled, and Tahoe's forests were left to regrow. A hundred years later these second-growth forests are overgrown and unhealthy, and a constant fire hazard. A testament to why clearcutting is a bad idea.

It's been said that "the Comstock lode was the tomb of the forests of Tahoe." Hundreds of millions of board feet of lumber went into the ground, never to be seen again. For more, you can read Dennis' article, as well as this piece by Julie Stone.

In the Nevada Appeal:

Dog park plans move forward

I wrote in May about efforts to get a dedicated dog park built in Carson City. Looks like the push is still on, but there isn't a whole lot of news to report, just a lot more of "This is what we want to do, and we need money to do it."

Suzuki dealership plans run out of gas

The Suzuki dealership that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago is now up for sale, a victim of the fumbling economy. You'd think this dealership would be doing better than others because they sold Smart Cars, which should be hot sellers with the cost of gas the way it is. But what killed the dealership is that Carson City was pushing for them to build a permanent building on the site; the mobile home they were selling out of wasn't cutting it anymore. So rather than go through the expense of all that construction (which was to be a fully green building, according to earlier news reports), they just pulled out of Carson City all together. The land is now for sale for $1.4 million.

Historic headframe collapses in Silver City

The downside of building with wood is that wood rots. Wood falls apart. Wood collapses. And that's what's happening in Virginia City and other parts of the Comstock, where all the 150-year old buildings are really starting to show their age. First it was the Sargent House, which was torn down last month because there was no way to save it. And now it's an old mine headframe in Silver City. The owners tried to have it demolished, but on the Comstock that involves piles and piles of paperwork. So the owner decided just to let nature take its course. Which it did Saturday afternoon. Timberrr!

Some time ago I created an Around Carson photo pool on Flickr, and then promptly proceeded to ignore it. So what a surprise it was to go in and check it out today, and find out that Andrea Daerice Juillerat had posted some awesome pictures of the crumbling ruins at American Flat.

Photo by Flickr user daerice

American Flat is up on the Comstock, just a couple of miles south of Gold Hill and VC. At one time the town was growing so fast that the residents petitioned the State Legislature to have the Capitol moved there. But when the gold and silver dried up, the town blew away and there's nothing left of it. The ruins that are there are what is left of 20th-century cyanide mills that were built to leach trace minerals out of the tailings the old mines had left behind. Obviously it wasn't profitable.

Photo by Flickr user daerice

I've never been up there, so it's great to see these pictures. American Flat always had a reputation as a place for kids from VC who had nothing better to do to hang out, drink, and party. The route of the V&T Railroad also passes close by the ruins. They keep talking about wanting to tear them down because they're a safety hazard, but nothing has been done yet.

Photo by Flickr user daerice

Go check out the whole set, 21 pictures in all. Andrea also has photos of Virginia City, Reno, and Tahoe.