History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

The “zephyr” is one of the peculiar institutions of Washoe, and as such is worthy of special mention. At certain seasons—generally in the fall and spring—furious gales prevail along the Comstock range. In and about Virginia City these wind-storms are particularly severe. The city being built on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, at an elevation of over 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the mountain rising abruptly above the city on the west, to the height of about 2,000 feet above the town, fierce whirls and “sucks” are formed in the lee of the mountain.

The prevailing winds of the country come from the west, and from this quarter also comes the “zephyr.” It is probably a straight-ahead gale before it strikes Mount Davidson, but upon that towering mass of granite it splits. Currents pass round the north and south sides of the mountain, meet in the city, and waltz about in the shape of whirlwinds of from eighty to two hundred horse-power. To complicate things still more, a third portion of the gale comes howling directly over the peak of the mountain, and plunges down into the town among the whirlwinds, knocking them right and left whenever it encounters them.

It is no doubt this particular and peculiar current of the gale whipping down over the summit of the mountain, that produces the remarkable vertical atmospheric action observable during the prevalence of a first-class zephyr. A breeze of this kind will snatch a man’s hat off his head and take it vertically a hundred feet into the air; then, as he stands gazing after it, the hat suddenly comes down at his feet, as though shot out of a cannon, and lies before him as completely flattened out as though it had been struck with a sledge-hammer.

The action of the zephyr is sometimes much the same as that seen in the leathern sucker with which boys are able to lift stones of considerable weight. A furious gust falls upon the flat tin roof of a building, then suddenly bounding upward rips a great hole in the tin. The whirlwinds and winds of all other kinds—for in the same minute, and almost at the same instant, it blows fiercely from every point of the compass—then enter the hole, seize upon the roof, and very soon complete its wreck. A section of tin twenty feet square, may be seen to flap in the air, like the loose sail of a vessel at sea, but with a clashing sound that may be heard a mile away; then, on a sudden, the whole sheet is ripped off, and goes sailing through the air like a piece of paper, landing, perhaps, two or three hundred yards away, and passing over half a dozen houses during its flight.

Of late these “zephyrs” have not been so furious and destructive as in years past. Then the tin on half a dozen roofs was often to be seen flapping in the breeze at the same moment, each section of roofing giving out a roar more startling than would be the combined sheet-iron thunder of a dozen country theatres of average enterprise.

“Sleep! Sleep no more! the zephyr doth murder sleep.” After a night of such wild work, the stranger within the gates of Virginia City is likely to make his appearance very early in the morning, red-eyed and wrathy.

I remember to have heard a gentleman who sported a bunch of hair on each cheek, about the size of a coyote’s tail, thus express himself one morning after such an elemental carnival:

“Wind! talk about wind! Why, the wind ’owled at such a rate last night that I thought it would bring the bloody ’ouse down about my ears. Blast it! when it ’owls like that a fellow can’t sleep, you know! The clark o’ the ’otel calls it a Washoe zephyr—zephyr be blowed, it was a bloody gale, you know!”

Not to exaggerate, I may say that one of the good old-fashioned Washoe zephyrs, even in the present condition of the town, not only howls itself, but also makes Virginia City howl, and would make Rome or any other place howl. At times such clouds of dust are raised, that, viewed from a distance, all there is to be seen is a steeple sticking up here and there, a few scattering chimneys, an occasional poodle-dog, and, perhaps, a stray infant drifting wrong end up, high above all the house-tops. Down below in the darkness, gravel-stones are flying along the street like grape-shot, and all the people have taken refuge in the doorways.

Such ripping of signs, threshing of awnings, rattling and banging of iron and wooden shutters—such tumbling about of chimney-pots and sections of stovepipe, is seldom seen or heard in any less favored town.