Two turn-of-the-twentieth-century towns, Goldfield and Tonopah, came to the rescue of Nevada. The boom-and-bust cycle of gold and silver mining had caused a severe depression in Nevada in the 1880s that lasted for almost twenty years and emptied the state of a third of its population. That bleak period ended when enormous gold strikes were found in 1900 in Tonopah. Two years later, a Shoshone Indian propector named Tom Fisherman showed Tonopah prospectors Billy Marsh and Harry Stimler gold-laden samples from hills more than thirty miles south of the booming town.
In blowing alkali dust, Marsh and Stimler went to Fisherman’s find and discovered gold on what would become known as Columbia Mountain. In honor of the weather, they called their initial claim the Sandstorm. They felt sure they had a true bonanza and made camp, calling the place Grandpa, because they felt this would be what all prospectors seek: “the granddaddy of all gold fields.”
Prospectors flocked to the area the following fall. By the end of 1903, Grandpa had been renamed Goldfield because early citizens felt the latter name would be much easier to promote to attract new investors. They were correct; the stampede was on, because the rumors were true and the deposits were deep. By August 1904, mines were producing a stunning ten thousand dollars per day in gold.
With such a promising future, Goldfield rapidly became a city of permanence. Stone and brick edifices were erected. Residences had electricity and running water. The Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad was completed in 1905, assuring a reliable way to get the gold to market. On the return trip, it brought necessities—and luxuries—to a city that was approaching twenty thousand citizens. Eventually, Goldfield was served by four railroads.
The Goldfield hotel is an appropriate symbol of the boom-and-bust nature of mining towns: The massive 1908 brick structure at one time served lobster to wealthy patrons. Later it became a near-flophouse as Goldfield dried up. It is vacant at this writing.
By 1907, Goldfield was the largest city in Nevada, with four schools, many four- and five-story buildings, and two exchanges where mining stocks were madly bought and sold with every new rumor.
The Goldfield Hotel, completed in 1908, was the final jewel that exemplified the town’s exalted status. It cost almost a half million dollars to build—a four-story brick beauty that featured 154 rooms, a lobby adorned in mahogany, and a dining room where patrons feasted on oysters and lobster.
And the gold just kept on coming. The output in 1909 was nine million dollars, double that of the previous year, and in 1910, the mines produced almost eleven million dollars in gold, bettering the impressive showing of the previous year.
The very nature of mining towns, however, is that they are created only eventually to fail. In 1913, a flood from a desert monsoon damaged many structures in Goldfield, which were never rebuilt. Gold deposits faltered, and production never again approached the peak year of 1910. In 1918, when the one-hundred-stamp Consolidated Mill stopped production, Goldfield began to fade. A huge fire in 1923 destroyed fifty-three square blocks of the town, but Goldfield was moribund long before that. But what a glorious run it had been: In fifteen years of production, the Goldfield Mining District had yielded more than eighty million dollars of the precious metal and was, for that period, the most important gold-producing district in the state. And Goldfield mining was not completely dead—a more modest output of about four hundred thousand dollars per year lasted from 1927 until 1940.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND GOLDFIELD
If you are coming from Tonopah, you will notice, before you enter Goldfield, the huge step-up-the-hill foundations of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company mill on the side of Columbia Mountain.
As the highway takes a bend to the east entering downtown Goldfield, you can see, on your right, the 1908 West Crook Avenue School, which now serves as the town’s library.
The highway into town becomes Crook Avenue, and at the northeast corner of Crook and Columbia Street is the town’s landmark building: the Goldfield Hotel. It operated into the 1940s, going from the most elegant hotel found between Chicago and San Francisco in Goldfield’s heyday to almost a flophouse during the lean times. Several people with grandiose plans have sunk thousands upon thousands of dollars into the hotel, but at this writing it is closed to the public.
The Nixon and Wingfield Block, with its graceful diagonal northwest corner, was constructed in 1907 by two powerful Goldfield entrepreneurs, Senator George Nixon and George Wingfield.
Goldfield high School, built in 1907, badly needs preserving and restoring, but the costs to the private owners are daunting.
Two blocks east of the hotel, on the northeast corner of Crook and Euclid avenues, stands the Esmeralda County Courthouse. The stone block fortress-like building opened in 1908, and its main attraction is the second floor’s district courtroom, which is elegantly appointed with dark wood and gold trim. Despite its decline in population, Goldfield has remained the county seat almost by default, because no other town in the county rivals even its reduced size. (Esmeralda County is one of the least-populated counties in the contiguous United States.)
The Firehouse Museum, on the southeast corner of Crook and Euclid, features a fire truck, an ambulance, antique fire equipment, and other memorabilia in the former Goldfield Fire Station No. 1.
East of the firehouse, on the southwest corner of Crook and Franklin avenues, is the elaborate, 1906 brick home of George Lewis “Tex” Rickard, owner of the Northern Saloon. Rickard became a promoter of Goldfield in general, but, more famously, a promoter of boxing on the national scene. In 1906, he and other entrepreneurs raised thirty thousand dollars to bring to Goldfield the light- heavyweight championship of the world, which featured defending champion Joe Gans, an African-American from Baltimore, against Danish-born challenger Oscar “Battling” Nelson. Gans won in an epic bout, a forty-two-rounder decided when Nelson threw an illegal low blow. The resulting nationwide publicity brought newfound respect for the cosmopolitan nature of Goldfield.
From Rickard’s house, head south on Franklin one block and drive west for two blocks on Myers Avenue. On the southeast corner of Myers and Fifth avenues stands the attractive 1908 cut-stone home of Charles Kline, a local masonry contractor. The house was sold in 1913 to Frank L. Beard, who had come to Goldfield in 1907 and remained there until his death in 1945.
From the Kline/Beard house, head one block west to Columbia and go north past the Goldfield Hotel. Cross Crook Avenue and proceed one block north to view three excellent buildings. On the southeast corner of Columbia and Ramsey avenues is the handsome, three-story, cut-stone Nixon and Wingfield Block, built in 1907. It served as the headquarters of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company and features a graceful, curving northwest corner where its entrance stands on the diagonal.
Next door to that structure on Ramsey is the one-story Southern Nevada Consolidated Telephone-Telegraph Company Building, built in 1906. From here, Goldfield’s booms and busts were relayed to the nation’s anxious stockholders.
Next door to the Nixon and Wingfield Block on Columbia stands the 1907 three-story Registration Trust Company Building, which also housed the John S. Cook Bank. The building, at this writing, is privately owned and occupied but is open to the public on occasion.
East of those three buildings, on the northwest corner of Ramsey and Euclid avenues, is the photogenic Goldfield High School, erected in 1907. During Goldfield’s short bonanza years, it served four hundred students annually. It was condemned in the 1940s. Esmeralda County currently has no high school. Students are bused to Tonopah, the seat of Nye County.
The cemetery is west of town. Take U.S. Highway 95 toward Tonopah, where a sign will direct you to the graveyard, which will be visible to the west, not long after the highway turns from west to north.
The Goldfield Cemetery is made up of many sections, including the Sacred Heart (Catholic), the Knights of Pythias, Elks Rest, Odd Fellows, and the Masons. To the southwest of the main cemetery is a section for the Goldfield Pioneers. These were graves disinterred and moved from downtown to this location in 1908, when the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad needed the land for its depot. A sign at the Pioneer Cemetery mentions that those who had the grim job of relocating the graves were known as “official ghouls.”
One grave in the main section of the newer cemetery is well worth visiting. As you enter the graveyard, count five rows to the west. On the right will be a large Joshua tree. Next to it is a marker with a child’s wagon, reading
Daughter
Mildred Joy Fleming
Born 1897 in Colorado
Died 30 August 1907 Goldfield Nevada
The stone was placed in the 1960s, but an earlier stone is behind it. The grave is for the daughter of Anne Ellis, author of one of the best accounts ever written of the pioneer Western experience, The Life of an Ordinary Woman. She spent most of her years in Colorado, much of that time in Bonanza. (Consult my book Ghost Towns of Colorado for more on that part of her life). Ellis spent a short time in Goldfield, and while there, her young daughter Joy was stricken with diphtheria and died. In the most moving account in her book, Ellis describes borrowing a child’s wagon and hauling a stepping stone she had stolen from the Sundog School’s construction site to her home. Ellis had no stonemason’s tools but only a large nail to engrave the word “JOY.” She then paid an expressman seventy-five cents to help her deliver the stone to the cemetery.
A kitchen sink in a Goldfield miner’s cabin has dusty utilitarian dishes ready for a washing that never came.
The dining area of the same cabin shows the mean circumstances in which many Goldfield miners lived.
WHEN YOU GO
Goldfield is 36 miles south of Tonopah on U.S. Highway 95.