H. B. Camp.
John Bishop.
J. F. Rogers.
The claim was called the Yellow Jacket because of the fact of the locators finding a nest of yellow-jackets in the surface rock while they were digging about for the purpose of prospecting the vein. Future developments proved this claim to be on the Comstock lode.
What the locators meant by “depths,” in their notice, was dips—no matter in what direction the “vain” might dip, they desired to put on record their right to follow it.
Many notices read—“This vein with all of its dips, spurs, angles, and variations.” The word ‘variations’ was presumed to capture everything in the vicinity.
A practice prevailed among the early miners of locating quartz ledges as “twins.” This was when they found two parallel veins so near together that they feared, in case of their locating but one, that parties would take up the other and give them trouble in some way. None of the twins ever became famous.
The owners of the Ophir, and some of the adjoining claims on the Comstock lead, continued to use rockers and arastras for some time after it was ascertained that what was at first supposed to be worthless, was silver ore of the richest description, but they no longer threw the “blue stuff” away. It was all saved and sacked up for shipment to San Francisco, thence to England for reduction. Many arastras were running, and the camp soon presented quite a bustling appearance. The first house erected in Virginia City, was built by Lyman Jones, who is still a resident of Nevada. It was a canvas structure, 18 × 40 feet in size, and stood near the present corner of B Street and Sutton Avenue, at no great distance from the Ophir Mine.
It was kept as a boarding-house and saloon. Mr. Jones opened his house with two barrels of “straight” whisky, but being of an accommodating disposition and wishing to suit all tastes, he dignified the contents of one of these barrels with the name of brandy. As alcohol was the foundation of nearly all the liquors seen in the country at that time, it made little difference by what name they were announced to the consumer, Mr. Jones had an old sluice-box for a bar, and the bar fixtures were by no means numerous or costly.
At this time the Ophir Company were in the habit of bringing their gold-dust to Mr. Jones’s house, and leaving it for safe-keeping, and frequently he had in his place as high as twenty and thirty thousand dollars.