A History of the Comstock Silver Lode & Mines / Nevada and the Great Basin Region; Lake Tahoe and the High Sierras

by Dan De Quille

Placer Mining on Gold Canyon

Gold was first discovered in this region in the spring of 1850. It was found in what is now known as Gold Canyon, by a company of Mormon emigrants en route to California. Having arrived too early to cross the Sierras, they encamped on the Carson River, where the town of Dayton now stands, to await the melting away of the snow on the mountains. To while away the time some of the men of the party tried prospecting in a large canyon that put into the river near their camp. They found gold in the first pan of gravel they washed. Looking further they soon found that certain bars and gravel banks afforded much richer pay dirt than that first tried. They were able to make from $5.00 to $8.00 a day, but left as soon as the mountains were passable, as they anticipated taking out gold by the pound on reaching California. Other emigrants who followed the Mormons did some mining in the canyon while camped on the river. All made good wages, and one or two families stopped and went regularly to work at mining. However, when the supply of water in the canyon gave out toward the end of summer, they “pulled up stakes” and crossed the mountains to California.

What was told of the mines on Gold Canyon by these emigrants induced parties of miners working in and about Placerville to visit them. During the winter and spring months, while there was water, these men were able to make from half an ounce to an ounce a day. The camp had no permanent population, however, until the winter and spring of 1852-53, when there were over 200 men at work on the bars and gravel banks along the canyon, with rockers, toms, and sluices.

As the gold found in the canyon came from quartz veins toward its head, about Silver City and Gold Hill, these early miners were even then on the track of the great Comstock Lode, but without once even suspecting the existence of such a large and rich vein. The trading-post, or little hamlet near the junction of the canyon and the Carson River, which at first served as a base of supplies, was presently left far behind as the miners worked their way up the stream from bar to bar, and they founded a town of their own, on a plateau near the canyon, called Johntown. This town was situated a short distance below where Silver City now stands, and was then the “mining metropolis” of Western Utah. One dilapidated stone chimney yet stands as a monument to mark the site of this now ruined mining town.

Johntown constituted a center from which prospectors occasionally scouted forth. These prospectors had no thought of anything except placer mines—native gold in gravel deposits. In 1857 some of these Johntown miners struck paying gravel in Six-mile Canyon. This canyon is about five miles north of Gold Canyon, for the greater part of its course, but the heads of the two canyons are only about a mile apart, and both are on what is now known as the Comstock Lode. The pay found on Six-mile Canyon began only about a mile below the massive croppings that tower above the Comstock; still these early miners never once thought of going up to the head of the ravine to look for and prospect the quartz veins; all they thought of was free gold in deposits of earth and gravel.

In January, 1859, James Finney, or Fennimore, better known by his popular soubriquet of “Old Virginia” (he being a native of the State of Virginia), John Bishop, and a few others of the Johntown miners, struck a rich deposit of free gold in placer diggings in a little hill at the head of Gold Canyon. From this hill the town of Gold Hill derives its name. These mines were so rich that most of the Johntown people moved to them. The gold was in a deposit of decomposed quartz mingled with soil, and the miners were really delving in a part of the Comstock Lode without at first knowing that they were at work on any quartz vein. These diggings yielded gold by the pound, at times.

In the spring of 1859 several Johntowners returned to the diggings they had discovered on Six-mile Canyon two years before. With these men went Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin, but finding all the paying ground already claimed they went to the head of the canyon and began prospecting on the slope of the mountain with a rocker, leading in a small stream of water from a neighboring spring. They found but poor pay in the light top dirt they were working (for there was no washed gravel), and they had about concluded to abandon their claim when they made the grand discovery of the age. They had sunk a small pit in which to collect water for use in their rockers. It was deeper than they had yet dug. Seeing in the bottom of this hole material of a different appearance from any they had yet worked, they were tempted to try some of it in their rocker. When a bucket of this dirt was rocked out, to their great delight the two men saw that they had made a “strike.” The whole apron of their rocker was covered with a layer of bright and glittering gold.

In that little prospect hole, silver mining in America, as now known, was born. At that moment the eyes of these two men, standing alone among the sagebrush of the rugged mountain slope, rested upon the first of many hundreds of millions in the two precious metals that have since been taken out of the Comstock Lode; for in the rocker along with the gold was a quantity of rich black sulphuret of silver. This “heavy black stuff,” which not a little puzzled the two uneducated miners, was almost pure silver. They thought it was some worthless base metal, and were very sorry to see it, as it clogged their rocker and interfered with the washing out of the fine gold-dust.

Henry Comstock.—Henry Thomas Paige Comstock, as he gave his name—has by many persons been credited with the discovery of the Comstock, but it is an honor to which he was not entitled. The credit of discovering silver in Nevada belongs to Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin. The grand discovery had been made several hours before Comstock knew of it. Toward evening on the day the “find” was made, Comstock, who had been out hunting his mustang, came to where the two men were at work. They were taking out gold by the pound and decomposed silver ore by hundreds of pounds. Comstock saw the gold and realized that a great strike had been made. He instantly determined to have a share. He at once declared that he had a claim upon the ground. He said he had located it some time before, also the water of the spring. He so blustered about his rights and so swaggered about what he could and would do that rather than have any trouble the two quiet miners agreed to take him in and give him a share of the mine.

No sooner had Comstock been made a partner in the mine than he placed himself at the front in everything about it. He constituted himself superintendent, did all the talking and none of the working, and was always ready to tell strangers about the mine. When visitors came it was always my mine and my everything. Thus people came to talk of Comstock’s mine and Comstock’s vein; then it was the Comstock vein—as persons making locations asserted that they were on the same vein as Comstock, i. e., the Comstock vein—and in that way the name of Comstock became fastened upon the whole lode. As the first claim was called the Ophir, that would have been a more fitting name for the whole vein than the one it now bears. For a long time Comstock no more appreciated the heavy black material that accompanied the gold, and in lumps of which much of the gold was embedded, than did O’Riley and McLaughlin. It was not until returns had been received from samples of it sent to California for assay that anyone in Nevada knew that the “heavy black stuff” was almost pure silver.