Mineral Treasures of Nevada.
There are mines of the precious metals in every county in the State. There are mines of gold, silver, lead, copper, and other valuable metals in all the rugged, parallel ranges of mountains running through the great central plateau. Mining and agriculture are thus pursued side by side. Lying between the mountain ranges and running in the same direction are valleys containing arable land, while on the benches and lower hills are excellent grazing lands, on which grow nutritious bunch-grass and other valuable native grasses. In all parts of the State mining is being profitably pursued, and almost weekly new and valuable discoveries of the precious metals are somewhere being made. Although the country has been walked and ridden over in various directions for the past twenty-five years, there are still hundreds of sections where no real prospecting has ever been done. Even in the oldest and best-known mining camps, many discoveries yet remain to be made. Although explorations were made in the southern half of the State in the early days, and thousands of mining locations made, little real mining has been done on any of the hundreds of large and promising veins discovered. The work done has been mere surface scratching, and the majority of the claims have long since been abandoned by their locators. Lack of facilities for the transportation of ores and supplies made it impracticable to work mines situated at a great distance from lines of railroad. The men who prospected and made locations in wild and distant regions were men of little means, and when their small stocks of money and provisions were exhausted, they were obliged to abandon their claims and return to the settlements, as men of capital could not be induced to invest their money in mines out in the wilderness far from any means of transportation. Thus it happens that there are many sections of the country the mines of which are the same as unprospected—mines which will produce millions when lines of railroad shall furnish facilities for the transportation of ore, machinery, and supplies. In Lincoln, Nye, White Pine, Lander, Elko, and Humboldt Counties, there are hundreds of mining districts in which this is the case, and in these hundreds of districts are lying unworked thousands of quartz veins, all showing more or less of the precious metals at the very surface, and even in the croppings above the surface.
A thousand years of mining will not exhaust the mineral treasures of the mountains of Nevada. Cheaper and cheaper means of mining and reducing ores will continue to be found, and presently it will be possible to work the mines of common metals which cannot now be touched. Besides gold and silver the mountains of Nevada contain veins of copper, lead, iron, antimony, nickel, zinc, and many others, as cobalt, graphite, and the like. Not only are the mountains of the State rich in all kinds of metals, but the lower lands are also filled with valuable mineral treasures. In the basins of extinct lakes in all parts of the State, and aggregating hundreds of square miles, are inexhaustible deposits of borax, soda, salt, gypsum, glaubers, alum, sulphur, and many other mineral products of a similar character, which are only now beginning to be utilized at points near lines of railway.