Eureka and Palisade.
This railroad is ninety miles in length. It is a narrow gauge and connects Eureka with the Central Pacific at Palisade. It was constructed to transport machinery and supplies to the mines and town of Eureka, and to carry out the products of the smelting furnaces.
Palisade.
Palisade contains about 250 inhabitants.
Eureka.
Eureka is a town of smelting furnaces. It is situated in the midst of a region in which very rich smelting ores are mined. The mines at Eureka were discovered in 1864, but not much was done with them until, two years later, and in 1869 the place began to boom and the yield of the mines soon became from one to three millions of dollars annually. Like other mining towns, Eureka has its ebbs and flows of fortune. For a year or two it was in “barrasca,” but since the beginning of 1888 it has been again getting into “bonanza.” It is the county seat of Eureka County, and has a population of about 2,500. In 1880 it had a population of 4,207, but in 1886-87 it lost inhabitants. Now it is once more gaining. It is the point from which many interior mining towns and camps receive their supplies. There are many fine and substantial public and private buildings in the town, and a good system of water works. In the Sentinel, published weekly, the place has a good local paper. Eureka is the Pittsburg of Nevada. In all directions its furnace chimneys vomit volumes of black, sulphurous smoke—when Government officials do not “pester” the people on account of their cutting scrub timber.