IRRIGATION AT LOVELOCK AND MANY OTHER PLACES IN NEVADA IS RAPIDLY SHOWING THAT NOT ALL ITS WEALTH LIES IN MINES
Reno, the most important and substantial Nevada cities, is 18,000 people and growing rapidly. To it the Virginia and Truckee Railroad brings business from the south, while the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway connects it with Northern California, Plumas and Modoc Counties (now being further developed by new lines under construction) and Southern Oregon. There is much good farming territory tributary; the Truckee meadows and Carson Valley are close by. The Truckee-Carson project will add to its trade greatly. The two factors giving greatest force to Reno’s forward movement are, however, the establishment of great railway terminals and shops by the Overland Route at Sparks, adjoining Reno, and the position of the city as the chief commercial center of the richest, and now the most actively exploited mining area in America. It has all the utilities of a city even to suburban electric railway service, is kept informed by four newspapers and carries $6,000,000 in deposit in six banks. The Nevada State University is one of the foremost schools of the West, and in its mining and agricultural department work ranks especially high. The Mackay Mining Building, dedicated June 6, 1908, is the pride of the university.
Carson City, Nevada’s capital, is a beautiful place of 5,000 people on the Virginia & Truckee Railway, thirty-one miles from Reno. It is the oldest town in the State, has an abundance of good water and good shade, creditable State buildings, and a United States branch mint. It trades freely with Southwestern Nevada and the Inyo Valley of California.
THE HEAD GATES NEAR HAZEN, NEVADA, OF THE CARSON-TRUCKEE IRRIGATION PROJECT WHEREBY THE GOVERNMENT PLANS TO GIVE IRRIGATED LANDS TO SETTLERS AT THE COST OF THE WATER
Virginia City, fifty-two miles from Reno on the Virginia & Truckee Ry., and the adjoining town of Gold Hill, are famous places, once the center of tremendous mining activity. The treasure houses underneath held wonderful stores of wealth. Virginia City at one time had 30,000 people, one-third of the population being always underground. The place was built on the steep slope of Mount Davidson, 6200 feet above sea-level. Until the discovery of the Comstock Lode (an ore-channel four miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, along the eastern base of Mount Davidson, eighteen miles southeast of Reno), men worth $200,000 were called rich, and the world’s millionaires could be counted on one’s fingers. In June, 1859, miners (among whom were Peter O’Riley, Patrick McLaughlin, James Finney, John Bishop, W. P. T. Comstock, and a man named Penrod) working in the ravine along the base of Mount Davidson, were much annoyed by a strange blue-black substance that clogged their rockers. Finally a sample was taken to Nevada City, Cal., for assay. It yielded over $6,000 per ton in gold and silver. Since the day of the rush that followed that discovery, work on the Comstock Lode has never ceased. From that ore-channel have been taken more than $700,000,000; the Consolidated California Virginia took out in six years $119,000,000 and paid $67,000,000 in dividends. Of the history of that wonderful time, little can be said here, and such men as William Sharon, John P. Jones, John W. Mackay, James G. Fair, I. W. Requa, Marcus Daly, Adolph Sutro, made famous by their connections with the Comstock Lode, must be passed by with merely mention of names. Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” and contemporary works, provide “mighty interesting” reading about that treasure era.
A WESTERN MINNEHAHA
Copyright by F. A. Rinehart, Omaha.
