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“A monumentally researched biography of one of the nineteenth century’s wealthiest self-made Americans…Well-written and worthwhile” (The Wall Street Journal) it’s the rags-to-riches frontier tale of an Irish immigrant who outwits, outworks, and outmaneuvers thousands of rivals to take control of Nevada’s Comstock Lode. Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When he heard of riches found on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1859, Mackay abandoned his claim and walked a hundred miles to the Comstock Lode in Nevada. Over the course of the next dozen years, Mackay worked his way up from nothing, thwarting the pernicious “Bank Ring” monopoly to seize control of the most concentrated cache of precious metals ever found on earth, the legendary “Big Bonanza,” a stupendously rich body of gold and silver ore discovered 1,500 feet beneath the streets of Virginia City, the ultimate Old West boomtown. But for the ore to be worth anything it had to be found, claimed, and successfully extracted, each step requiring enormous risk and the creation of an entirely new industry. Now Gregory Crouch tells Mackay’s amazing story—how he extracted the ore from deep underground and used his vast mining fortune to crush the transatlantic telegraph monopoly of the notorious Jay Gould. “No one does a better job than Crouch when he explores the subject of mining, and no one does a better job than he when he describes the hardscrabble lives of miners” (San Francisco Chronicle). Featuring great period photographs and maps, The Bonanza King is a dazzling tour de force, a riveting history of Virginia City, Nevada, the Comstock Lode, and America itself.
Presents folklore and legends, heroes and villains, wars and important events in the history of the Old West. Includes also examples of Western art and music.
A collaborative photo-history of the natural beauty of the narrow-gauge railroads and mountain trails leading to the San Juan Mountains' mining camps, boomtowns, and ghost towns.
ElkhornBasin; Butte; Georgetown and Southern Cross; Granite; Gold Creek; Beartown; Garnet; 6. IDAHO: FROM BOISE BASIN TO THE COEUR D'ALENES; Spalding; Pierce (City) and Oro Fino; Elk City; Florence; Leesburg; Pioneerville; Idaho City; Centerville; Placerville; Boonville and Ruby City; Silver City; De Lamar; Dewey; Wallace; Gem; Burke; Eagle City; Murray; Kellogg and Wardner; 7. WASHINGTON: CHIEF MOSES HELD THE KEY; Fort Colvile; Colville; Kettle Falls, Daisy, and Marcus; Bossburg; Northport; Orient and Laurier; Republic; Okanogan City, Chopaka City; Oroville; Ruby; Conconully.
This classic account of Old West mining camps and gold-hunting prospectors is “a successful digging of a rich historical vein . . . phenomenal” (The New York Times). This colorful blend of history, reference, and travelogue brings to life the frenzied search for precious metals in nineteenth-century America through a tour of mining camps and former boomtowns, many now abandoned. It reveals the unbelievable privations men endured in the high Sierra and the Rockies and in crossing the desert wastes of Arizona, Utah and Nevada; the mines first discovered in New Mexico by Coronado and his men four centuries ago; and the first great rush that hit California in 1849. She follows the miners who poured in successive waves into the golden gulches of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, climbed to the deeper mines high in the mountains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and dared at last to penetrate the hostile Black Hills of South Dakota. In personally following the trails of the pioneering prospectors, Wolle stumbles upon mute evidence of past bloodshed, lust, and struggle, and recreates the excitement of the period. A gifted artist, she also includes maps and “more than a hundred poignant sketches conveying the loneliness, melancholy and crumbling dryness of ghost cities which throbbed once with the hopes of many people” (The New York Times). “The fascinating and definitive book on the ghost and near-ghost towns of the Old West.” —Lucius Beebe, The Territorial Enterprise “Good popular history and [a] useful reference work.” —Library Journal
As caretaker to Boot Hill, Gospel Cummings carried a Bible on his left and a black-butted six-gun in a low-slung holster on his right. Gospel had a personal interest in those who died with their boots on, and of late, there had been so many that he could barely keep up with praying for their souls. Some of the trouble was caused by Cord Demingway, ramrod of an outlaw gang, and some of it was the fault of Pug Jones, who had his own band of followers. But more and more, the cause was a secret map pointing the way to an old Spanish treasure. It was making ruthless gunslingers out of usually honest cowboys who could then become the targets of other bonanza hunters - or they could draw first. One thing for sure was that getting to the treasure was treacherous business.