History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

“We are fast subduing the fire. It is death to attempt to come up from where you are. We shall get you out soon. The gas in the shaft is terrible, and produces sure and speedy death. Write a word to us and send it upon the cage, and let us know where you are.”

No answer came back—all below were dead.

As soon as it was known that the mines were on fire, and that a large number of miners were imprisoned below, by the dense volumes of smoke and suffocating gases that poured up through the several shafts, the most intense excitement prevailed, both in Gold Hill and Virginia City. The wives, children, and relatives of the lost flocked to the several hoisting works, approaching as near to the mouths of the shafts as they were allowed to come, and, standing there on all sides, their grief and lamentations caused tears to course down the cheeks of the most stout-hearted. “Lost! lost! lost!” was the despairing cry constantly uttered by many of the women whose husbands were below.

The Rev. Father Manogue, a pioneer of the country, and several other Catholic clergymen of Virginia City and Gold Hill, moved about among the people and did all that could be done to comfort and quiet the weeping women and children, but even the reverend fathers could find little to say in mitigation of the woes of such an occasion. Many of the poor women, with weeping children clinging about them, stood round the shafts, convulsively clasping and wringing their hands, and rocking their bodies to and fro in excess of misery, yet uttering scarcely a word or a sob—they at first seemed utterly stupefied and overwhelmed by the suddenness and awfulness of the calamity. Turn where they might there was no comfort for them.

At the Yellow-Jacket mine the smoke and gases drew away to the southward, men descended the shaft, and all but one man known to be below at that point were brought up dead.

As the cage containing the dead bodies rose up at the mouth of the shaft there was heard a general wail from the women, who could with difficulty be restrained from climbing over the ropes stretched to keep back the crowd. “Oh! God,! who is it this time?” Some one among them would be heard to say. The dead bodies would then be lifted from the cage, and then borne in the arms of stout miners and firemen outside of the circle of ropes.

As the men passed out with the dead, the women would crowd forward in an agony of fear and suspense to see the faces. “Oh! Patrick!” one would be heard to shriek, when the bystanders would be obliged to seize her and lead her away.

At the Kentuck and Crown Point shafts there steadily arose thick, stifling columns of smoke and pungent gases, generated by the burning pine-wood and heated ores below. No person who stood at the mouth of either of these shafts could entertain the slightest hope that any one of those in the mines could be alive; yet wives and relatives would still hope against everything. In every direction almost superhuman exertions were made to extinguish the fire.

By closing up the shafts and pouring down water, it was thought that the fire might have been extinguished, but to have done so would have been equivalent to saying that all below were dead—and would, indeed, have been death to any that might have been living—besides, the order to close the shafts would have drawn from all present at all interested in the fate of those below such a wail as no one would have cared to hear.

No one could enter the Crown Point or Kentuck shafts, but that of the Yellow-Jacket being cooler, the firemen began to work their way down it, carrying with them their hose and bravely battling with the fire. A long string of hose was attached to a hydrant and carried down to the 800-foot level, where the fight began. It was such work as few firemen in the United States have ever undertaken, and such as none but firemen in a mining country could have done. The miners and firemen battled side by side. The firemen would advance as far as possible, extinguishing the burning timbers, and when a cave of earth and rock occurred, or the blackened and weakened timbers seemed about to give way, the miners would go to the front and make all secure.