Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman
Although Nevada isn't always the first state that pops into the thoughts of Western readers, its history, like that of other states west of the Mississippi, is replete with a colorful past directly related to the settlement of this vast frontier.
Source: Wikipedia
Traveling from east to west along Interstate 80, we encounter Wells, Deeth, Halleck, Elko, Golconda, Winnemucca, Oreana, Lovelock, Reno, and Verdi, many of which appear as settings in On the Track of Vengeance, the fourth book of my series An Adventure of the Old West.
Wells was settled in the 1850s, when it was known as Humboldt Wells, taking its name from the nearby river and springs of the same name and, possibly, from its position at the head of the Humboldt Trail. Situated along the future routes of the Transcontinental Railroad, as a rest stop for railroad passengers, the site caught fire toward the close of the nineteenth century. Seeking assistance, the message "Wells is burning" was telegraphed, which event led to the shortening of the name to simply "Wells."
Source: Pinterest
The telegraph followed the Transcontinental Railroad. In 1869, a branch line station including telegraph service was built near Deeth, Nevada, a rural area through which the Central Pacific Railroad ran. Six years later, a post office was constructed to serve local ranches and farms, and a town began to take shape. Mining also attracted newcomers, and the fledgling community, named for a local pioneer, soon boasted a Mormon chapel, stables for horses, merchants' stores, a blacksmith, and, of course, the inevitable saloons. In fact, Deeth became a cattle shipping point and a trading center for ranchers in the vicinity of the town.
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Source: Wikipedia
Among the town's buildings were two hotels and a saloon, the patrons of which were often soldiers stationed at the nearby military installation. In 1874, both a store and a school opened, the latter continuing to educate the townspeople's children until the 1950s. The camp developed into Fort Halleck, but its abandonment in 1886 led to the town's decline.
Source: Elko Daily Free Press
The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad across Nevada also led to the 1868 settlement of Elko at the east end of the California Trail. After the railroad's construction, Elko persisted as a shipping center for ranching, mining, rail freight, and sundry other supplies.
Named after Golkonda, the diamond mining district in India, Nevada's Golconda, founded in 1869, grew up around mines that produced copper, silver, gold, and lead. Home to French, Portuguese, Paiute, and Chinese residents, the town, by the first decade of the twentieth century, boasted a train depot, a few hotels, a school, various business establishments, newspapers, and two bordellos. However, after the ores were exhausted, the town declined.
Chief Winnemucca
Source: Pinterest
For Western fans, Winnemucca has several claims to fame. It is named after nineteenth-century Chief Winnemucca, of the North Paiute tribe, whose members occupied a nearby camp. The town was situated along the Central Pacific Railroad's portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. On September 19, 1900, Butch Cassidy's gang robbed the First National Bank of Winnemucca of $32,640. The town is also home to the Buckaroo Hall of Fame and Heritage Museum.
In both the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Chinese railroad workers numbered about four hundred and lived in a portion of the city known as Chinatown, which featured the Joss House on Baud Street, a visitor to which was future Chinese President Sun Yat-Sen, who was touring the United States to raise funds to help finance the Xinhai Revolution. As Tombstone's Doc Holliday might have said, Winnemucca was "very cosmopolitan," indeed.
Source: Wikipedia
Nevada mines produced so much ore of various kinds that mills were erected to process the materials. One such operation, the Montezuma Smelting Works, built in Oreana in 1857, not only smelted ores from the Arabia and Trinity mining districts, but was also the first lead smelter to ship lead commercially; others shipped their output only locally. From the 1870s through the first two-and-a-half decades of the twentieth century, Orena Station was also a stop on the Central Pacific Railroad, serving as a supply depot for Rochester mines.
Situated halfway along the Humboldt Trail, Lovelock, or "Big Meadows," as it was originally known, was a bustling mecca of activity in 1849, with as many as two-hundred-and-fifty wagons present at times, as wagon trains came and went throughout the day and livestock, including cattle and mules, grazed in nearby fields in which settlers harvested rye.
However, it was the silver and gold mining and the Central Pacific Railroad in particular, that gave the town a solid foundation. Now the seat of Pershing County, the town was named in honor of English settler George Lovelock's family. In addition to three newspapers, Lovelock included the Big Meadows Hotel, a train station, a school, several churches, and a thriving business district.
Gold mining plays a large part in Blood Mountain, the third action-packed novel in my series An Adventure of the Old West, when former bounty hunter and sheriff Bane Messenger discovers a gold mine on property that he and his wife Pamela just purchased, as a result encountering unscrupulous men who will do anything to get their hands on his precious ore.
Travel along the California Trail, the discovery of gold near Virginia City, and, most of all, the discovery of silver in 1859 at the Comstock Lode brought thousands of prospectors and miners West, many of whom sought their fortunes in and near Reno, which was founded in 1868 and incorporated in 1903.
The city was named for Major General Jesse L. Reno, a veteran of the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, a "soldier's soldier" who often fought side-by-side with his troops. Even today, Nevada remains the world's third-largest gold producer, after South Africa and Australia.
In 1868, Verdi, originally O'Neil's Crossing, was renamed by Charles Crocker, the founder of the Central Pacific Railroad. The original name of the town had honored the man who'd built a bridge there in 1860. The name change was as much a matter or chance as it was of intention, havi g resulted from Crocker's having pulled a slip of paper bearing the famous Italian opera singer's name from a hat.
The gateway to the Verdi Range in California, the town of Verdi was the approximate location of a train robbery in 1870. On November 4 of that year, five men blocked the track near a lumber camp in the vicinity of Verdi, causing the train, which was traveling from San Francisco to Virginia City, to stop. The robbers made off with about $40,000 of the $60,000 of gold and silver the train was carrying. The same train was robbed a second time near either Pequop or Moor, Nevada (reports differ), and the robbers escaped with about $3,000.
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