After consulting together, the discoverers concluded that, rather than have a great row about the matter, they would put the names of Comstock and Penrod in their notice of location.
This being arranged to his satisfaction, Comstock next demanded that 100 feet of ground on the lead should be segregated and given to Penrod and himself for the right to the water they were using—he stoutly asserting that he not only owned the land, but also the water, and, as they had recognized his right to the land, they could not consistently ignore his claim to the water flowing upon it. In short, he talked so loudly and so much about his water-right that he at last got the 100 feet, segregated, as he demanded. This 100 feet afterwards became the Spanish or Mexican mine, and yielded millions of dollars.
Comstock would probably not so easily have obtained what he demanded, had the men who made the discovery been fully aware of its great value. They, however, did not know that the “blue stuff” (sulphuret of silver), which they had dug into, was of any value, and even the gold itself seemed altogether too plentiful as well as a good deal “off color.”
Comstock had probably at some time posted up a notice claiming 160 acres of land, somewhere in that neighborhood, as a ranche, but if he did so he never had his notice recorded. Men in those days, while roving about the country, very frequently wrote out and stuck up notices claiming land, springs, the water of streams, quartz veins, gravel deposits, or anything else that they might for the moment think valuable, but unless such claims were properly recorded and worked they could not be held, as all miners and others well knew—a mere notice expiring at the end of ten days, when the property might be taken up, recorded and held by the first man that came along. Comstock had some show of right to the water and to the placer-mines along the upper part of Six-mile Cañon, as the year before, he, Old Virginia and Penrod, had bought of old Joe Caldwell a set of sluice-boxes and the water of a spring. However, the possession of a set of sluices on the cañon and a right to use water from a certain spring in the neighborhood, by no means gave Comstock or his friends the right to lay claim to a vein of quartz found in a hill somewhere in their section of the country.
John Bishop, who bought Old Virginia’s interest in the sluices, gravel-diggings and water, got no share of the quartz vein discovered by Pete O’Riley and Pat McLaughlin, though he managed to get in on the lead, locating the mine known as the Central No. 1; now a part of the California, one of the bonanza mines with millions of ore in sight.
Bishop put up the first arastra ever built on the lead, starting it up two or three days before that of the Ophir folks began running. He sold his interest in the Central No 1.[No 1.] for $4,000 and shortly afterwards the purchasers sold the same ground for $1,800 per foot—now (as incorporated in the California mine) the ground is selling at over $50,000 per foot, and John Bishop still works, as a miner, at Gold Hill.
After Comstock had managed to become largely interested in the new discovery, and after the gold taken out by O’Riley and McLaughlin had been carried down to Gold Hill and exhibited and examined, there was at once a great local excitement in regard to the new diggings, and all were anxious to get an interest in the claim, or on the lead as near to the original discovery as possible.
Those who were finally recorded in the Ophir notice as original locators were the following persons: Peter O’Riley, Patrick McLaughlin, H. T. P. Comstock, E. Penrod, and J. A. (“Kentuck”) Osborne. The men named had one-sixth each of 1,400 feet of ground on the lead and, in addition, Comstock and Penrod had 100 feet segregated to them, making 1,500 feet taken up by the party.
The 100 feet of Comstock and Penrod, though in the midst of the 1,400 feet of ground, was not reckoned as a part of the Ophir claim and was soon sold and worked as a separate mine, under the name of the Mexican or Spanish mine.
The Ophir claim was the first that was located, as a quartz claim, at any point on the Comstock lode, though as early as February 22nd., 1858, Old Virginia made a location on a large vein lying to the westward of the Comstock. This vein is known as the Virginia lead or Virginia croppings. It has never yielded much ore, but contains vast quantities of base metal of various kinds.