Silver reportedly discovered by an Indian in late 1865 caused a rush to the Toquima Range, with eager prospectors abandoning their workings in Austin, Ione, and other Nevada camps. The town that formed near the diggings was called Belmont, apparently for another town elsewhere in the United States. This Belmont first appeared in print in Austin’s newspaper, the Reese River Reveille in June 1866, and in February of the following year, the same newspaper crowed, “the excitement . . . appears to be unabated, and the influx of strangers continues, and many a traveler is lucky if he finds a place to lay his head under shelter.”
Later that same year, Belmont’s own Silver Bend Reporter featured advertisements for an array of enterprises, including mercantiles, saloons, a drugstore, restaurants, hotels, a brewery, a bank, a dentist’s office, and the Austin & Belmont Stage Company. A ten-stamp mill processed silver ore, and five sawmills provided lumber from the native pine and cedar.
Belmont’s former Nye County Courthouse was completed in 1876, at about the same time that the area’s silver deposits depleted. Belmont lost the county seat in 1905 to Tonopah.
Belmont took the seat of Nye County from Ione in 1867 when its population grew to two thousand citizens. It became the hub of commerce for a radius of almost a hundred miles, but it remained isolated, with goods coming by rail from San Francisco and Sacramento to Austin, where they were then shipped by pack train ninety miles to Belmont. East of town, the open flats and numerous springs brought farmers and ranchers to Monitor Valley.
The bonanza years, as was often the case in mining towns, were short. Only ten years after the discovery of silver, the mines began to play out, even as an elegant, brick, two-story courthouse was completed. Minor discoveries kept Belmont in business into the 1880s, but the population declined to less than two hundred, with many of those employed by Nye County for governing duties.
When Tonopah became a rising mining star beginning in 1900, Belmont’s days were numbered. The county seat was moved to Tonopah in 1905, and Belmont lost its post office six years later. Sporadic mining and reworking of old mill tailings kept a few people in town, but by the end of World War I, Belmont was a ghost.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND BELMONT
As you enter downtown Belmont from the south, you’ll see a series of ruins on either side of the street. The brick remnant on your left was the First National Bank, followed by a series of slate walls of other businesses. On the opposite side once stood a restaurant, the two-story Cosmopolitan Saloon, a market, two hardware stores, a saloon, and a mercantile. At the end of the street stands the former Combination Mining Company building, now a delightful bed-and-breakfast inn.
The two-story brick courthouse, one of the more photographed historic buildings in Nevada, stands on a knoll west of town. Tours are offered occasionally. The interior, at this writing, is largely vacant, but the building is structurally sound, due to recent foundation, roof, and exterior refurbishment. Carved into one of the first-floor doorframes is the name of Charles Manson, who, with his “family,” camped in nearby Monitor Valley in 1969, the same year as their ghastly Tate and LaBianca murders in Los Angeles. Ironically, along with his name and date, Manson also carved the peace symbol made famous in the 1960s.
The second Monitor-Belmont Mill, often mistakenly called the Highbridge Mill, was built in 1915 using Combination Highbridge Mill bricks. Its stark walls are a favorite subject of photographers.
The Combination Highbridge Mill east of Belmont was dismantled in 1914 to erect the second Monitor-Belmont Mill.
On a hill east of downtown Belmont is a replica, dedicated in 2001, of the 1874 Catholic church that was moved in 1906 to the nearby pioneer town of Manhattan, where it still stands.
Belmont’s most photogenic ruins lie east of town. From the town’s flagpole, head east, where in .9 of a mile, you’ll see the ruins and ninety-foot brick stack of the 1867 Combination Highbridge Mill, a forty-stamp mill that was dismantled in 1914. Beyond those ruins .2 of a mile is a dirt road heading south. In .6 of a mile, you’ll come to the dramatic brick skeleton of the second Monitor-Belmont Mill, which was constructed in 1915 using the brick from the Combination Highbridge Mill. This flotation mill, which failed after only two years of operation, is often incorrectly referred to as the Highbridge Mill; it even appears as such on the 1971 Belmont East USGS Topographic Map.
The Belmont Cemetery is kept well trimmed by local volunteers, making it one of Nevada’s more attractive ghost town graveyards.
You passed the turnoff to the cemetery as you entered Belmont. Drive .9 of a mile south from Belmont’s flagpole and turn east on Cemetery Road. Proceed south along the cemetery’s western fence and turn east to the main gate.
The Belmont Cemetery is a well-kept, attractive graveyard, with pines and junipers nicely trimmed by volunteers. Several wooden picket fences surround headstones. As a reminder that some mistakes are indeed “carved in stone,” there’s an attractive IOOF marker for Andrew Anderson, who died in 1886 at age sixty-five. He was a native of “Sweeden.”
WHEN YOU GO
From Tonopah, which is 118 miles south of Austin, drive 5 miles east on U.S. Highway 6 to the junction of Nevada Highway 376. Proceed north for 12.8 miles, where Nevada Secondary Route 882, the clearly marked road to Belmont, heads northeast. Belmont is 26.3 miles from that turnoff. The road is paved all the way to Belmont, but not beyond.