444 Chapter 16 The Conquest of the West
nuggets in order to swindle gullible investors.
Ostentation characterized the successful, mere swag-
ger those who failed. During the administration of
President Grant, Virginia City, Nevada, was at the
peak of its vulgar prosperity, producing an average of
$12 million a year in ore. Built on the richness of the
Comstock Lode ($306 million in gold and silver was
extracted from the Comstock in twenty years), it had
twenty-five saloons before it had 4,000 people. By
the 1870s its mountainside site was disfigured by
ugly, ornate mansions where successful mine opera-
tors ate from fine china and swilled champagne as
though it were water.
In 1873, after the discovery of the Big Bonanza, a
seam of rich ore more than fifty feet thick, the future
of Virginia City seemed boundless. Other discoveries
shortly thereafter indicated to optimists that the min-
ing boom in the West would continue indefinitely.
The finds in the Black Hills district in 1875 and 1876,
heralding deposits yielding eventually $100 million,
led to the mushroom growth of Deadwood, home of
Wild Bill Hickok, Deadwood Dick, Calamity Jane,
and such lesser-known characters as California Jack
and Poker Alice. The West continued to yield much
gold and silver, especially silver, but big corpora-
tions produced nearly all of it. The mines around
Deadwood were soon controlled by one large com-
pany, Homestake Mining. Butte, Montana, was simi-
larly dominated by Anaconda Mining.
This is the culminating irony of the history of
the mining frontier: Shoestring prospectors, inde-
pendent and enterprising, made the key discoveries.
They established local institutions and supplied theCreede, Colorado, circa 1890, a mining town whose inhospitality to women is suggested by their
absence. One reason is indicated in information compiled for another Colorado mining town,
Leadville, which, with a population of 20,000, had 250 saloons, 120 gambling establishments,
100 brothels, and only 4 churches.Comstock Lodeyielded ores worth nearly $4,000 a
ton. In 1861, while men in the settled areas were laying
down their tools to take up arms, the miners were rac-
ing to the Idaho panhandle, hoping to become mil-
lionaires overnight. The next year the rush was to the
Snake River valley, then in 1863 and 1864 to Montana.
In 1874 to 1876 the Black Hills in the heart of the
Sioux lands were inundated.
In a sense the Denvers, Aurarias, Virginia Cities,
Orofinos, and Gold Creeks of the West during the
war years were harbingers of the attitudes that flour-
ished in the East in the age of President Grant and
his immediate successors. The miners enthusiastically
adopted the get-rich-quick philosophy, willingly
enduring privations and laboring hard, always with
the objective of striking it rich. The idea of reserving
any part of the West for future generations never
entered their heads.
The sudden prosperity of the mining towns
attracted every kind of shady character—according to
one forty-niner “rascals from Oregon, pickpockets from
New York, accomplished gentlemen from Europe, inter-
lopers from Lima and Chile, Mexican thieves, gamblers
from no particular spot, and assassins manufactured in
Hell.” Gambling dens, dance halls, saloons, and broth-
els mushroomed wherever precious metal was found.
Law enforcement was a constant problem.
Much of the difficulty lay in the antisocial attitudes
of the miners themselves. Gold and silver dominated
people’s thoughts and dreams, and few paid much
attention to the means employed in accumulating
this wealth. Storekeepers charged outrageous prices;
claim holders “salted” worthless properties with