NEVADA’S GHOST CITY

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 May 1933, Page 10

NEVADA’S GHOST CITY

imagination should-.people that trail witli. the farmers who forsook their j fields, the traders who left their stores,--the. San Francisco- clerks who deserted their. desks to seek fortune in/Virginia City. ' , 'He should see .them, spread their Ijiahkets on the •snpjydriftsi to give a foothold for. the mules. His mind’s dye should strew the' track with dead animals, broken wagons, abandoned packs' cast aside in the race to stake "Claims on the, mountain of silver and gold. There are men in Virginia City now who came here oilly a little later than those crazed pioneers. They recall with-an ironic smile that those men who risked death fn-the snows after,wards’. Spent 10,000,1)00- dollars in litigation over disputed cjaiinS. This was a paradise for lawyers as well as for miners. ■ Th all externals the town has not altered since the heyday of its fortune. It never, became a modern American city, but slowly decayed as it stood. It sank into a dereliction, and its lifeblood ebbed as the Comstock Lode was - exhausted. No town-planners have ever levelled the streets, and no one ever troubled to give them names; they are simply lettered A, B, C, and D, a series -of rough terraces. The side-walks are paved with wooden planks laid on the bare earth. The whole town is a. set ready-made for the film producer. Every house has its broad balcony, supported by pillars from the street—that familiar balcony whence the hero so neatly leaps 10ft into the saddle of liis waiting horse; that balcony whence pic-ture-goers have so often seen the sheriff and his men defend themselves when outlaws shoot up the town.

FAMOUS' COMSTOCK : LODEL

Martin Moore, the London . “Daily Telegraph’s” special commissioner, writing from Virginia City, Nevada, states: —

In a fold of the barren mountains, twenty miles south of Reno, lies Virginia City, . forgotten cradle of- fmillionaires. Three times a week a shabby motor-bus brings a. few, let? ters, a few baskets of provisions, and a few curious visitors to a town whose name once rang from coast to coast as a synonym for fabulous fortune,. Out of -this tawny mountain side, too drought-stricken even for' pines to flourish, once flowed a stream of silver and gold that seemed as though it could never run dry. From Virginia City came bullion that financed a war, laid cables across the Atlantic and the Pacific, built railroads, banks, hotels and telegraph lines, made countless mushroom fortunes.

For running through this hillside is the famous Comstock Lode, which has produced more than 700,000,000 dollars worth of precious metals. Some place the Comstock yield at a round 1,000,000,000, for few records were kept in those early days when the lode was first struck.

But the silence of decay has fallen, on this silver city of the Silver State. The mountain, riddled with 600 niiles of tunnels, no longer yields the rich ores it once produced. M°st of the mines are closed, because gold is scarce and silver is too cheap to be worth the milling. Once there were 35,000 people living here on this barrel mountain shelf; now there are fewer than 500.

On a crisp January morning I was the only passenger in the carrier’s ’bus. As we went lurching down into Virginia City the driver raised his hand to point out a dark speck on the billside. “See that? That’s my gold mine. My brother is going to buy the next one, and we’ll run the workings together.” Thus it is in Virginia' City to-day. The wheel has turned'full circle. Here was land so barren that the Government could not give it away; then, almost overnight, a few square feet became worth a fortune; now those mil-lion-dollar claims can be bought for a busman’s savings. WILD' WEST DAYS. The mine this carrier .lias bought, perhaps, was the one whose first owner had solid silver knobs fitted to every door in his home. Or .maybe it was the claim which made a fortune for that Croesus of the pick and shovel who filled his water tank with champagne and consumed vast quantities of caviar, because it was the most Expensive food he could think of. There are men in Virginia City still who remember those wild and spacious days. It is not in the carrier’s ’bus that a visitor should enter Virginia City. Ho should come galloping down the narrow street with pistols at his belt and tie up his horse at the nearest pillar? Or; if he would re-create a grimmer memory of Virginia City, the

Virginia City has plots ready-made for the romancer too. Here at a street, corner still stands the Crystal Bai’, very type -of a Wild West saloon, ft was in the Crystal Bar that miners showered gold on the first theatrical troupe who came 600 miles from Salt Lake City to entertain, them.

THE CRYSTAL BAR. And it was at this street corner, surely, that the first itinerant preacher mounted a chair and sought to turn the hard-bitten citizens to paths of righteousness. For his eloquence they filled his hat with gold and silver — but did not mend their ways. But of that gaudy..past only the setting remains. The same scarred swing doors still give access to the Crystal Bar, but all is silence and twilight within. A museum case stands against the wall, displaying notched guns, grimy packs of cards, relics of violence and romance. On the bar counter is a revolving rack of picture postcards, behind it a soda fountain. A little higher Up the hill stands the derelict wooden Opera House, where Jenny Lind once .sang. The miners could well afford the costliest entertainment. The handsome sevenstorey .hotel was burnt down and never rebuilt. On “C” street, main thoroughfare of Virginia City, only one shop in ten remains open. The wooden houses are rotting away for want of paint, or collapsing, undermined by the tunnels that honeycomb the mountain.

traveller should come over the snow- The once wealthy population has drifted parses of the Sierras from dwindled to a corporal’s guard. But the west, in the track of that first these old miners are undefeated by mad rush in the winter of 1859. His the decay around them. Where once

gold was found, gold will be found again. And when the new day of prosperity dawns they will be there to greet it. ; They have, just installed a modern mill which can, extract profitable quantities of precious metal .from ores that were formerly left behind as too poor to be worth exploiting.. It may be that even now the tide of new wealth has set in. For two months ago there passed through Virginia City a famous “old timer.” Not long since he had sold his share in a Nevada mine for 1,000,000 dollars cash' and another 1,000,000 dollars stodk in. the newly-formed company. But millionaire though he was the blood of the prospector still flowed in his veins. He had his pick, and hammer in the car; he could not resist stopping by the wayside to chip and burrow in the old Comstock Lode. Luck was with him and almost at once he struck gold—not a rich seam, but a new one, whose extent cannot yet be guessed. When I visited his claim this afternoon he had already sunk a shaft more than 50ft., and his. men were working day and night in three shifts. Each ton of ore is yielding--20 dollars worth of gold and 20 cents worth of silver. It is not riches yet, but enough to give Virginia City new hope. Over the inhospitable hills the carrier drove me back to Reno and civilisation. He paused again in the dusk to tell me of the new gallery he was going to dig between his brother’s mine and his own. What the “old timer” had done he, too, could do.

Where once there had been so much gold and silver there surely must be more. Virginia City was not finished yet. Some day, perhaps very soon, the town would hear again the frenzied cry of “Gold!” Then its tottering houses would be rebuilt and its shuttered shops reopened. Then the Crystal Bar would take down its rack of postcards, and the saloon would ring once more with song and shouting.