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Show 60 IMMIGRANTS' AND SETTLERS' GUIDE / • NEVADA TERRITORY. S I LV E R M I N E S A N D M I N I N G. Area, ~1,539 Squa~e Miles; Acres, 52, 194:,960-Population, 30,000- Capital, Carson C1ty; Commercial Centre, Virginia City-Population 15,000. ' Among the valuable mineral fields of the Great West the. young and :flourishing Territory of Nevada is justly entitled to be placed in the front rank. ITS P .A.ST HISTORY is a very brief one. Five years ago Mr. Horace Greeley traveysed the region now known as Nevada, then the outlying western portion of Utah at which time he states that at least ninety-nine-hu'n.dredths of it had n_ever had the dwelling of civilized human beings within Sl~h~. He travelled some four or five hundred miles Within the present limits of the Territory and never saw S? much as a field of grain nor a decent 'house therein till he struc~ the Carson River near its "sink" the day before crossing the Sierra into California. There was one hous.e-a very new one-at Virginia City, now the commercial centre of the Territory. " At that time (July, 1859) .ther~ could hardly have been two hundred decent d welhngs In the Territory." Three months Ia:ter. (Se~tember, 1859), a party of Y?ung men f~~om llhno1s arrived at this point (Virginia C1ty), on their way to California. A brief extract from .. TO THE NEW STATES AND TERRITORIES. 61 their "log-book" will give some idea of the condition of affairs at that time : " Camping for a day or two, preparatory to the fatigue of crossing the dreaded Sierras into California, we learned that a few miners were. at work in the vicinity, having found favorable ' indications' and 'prospects' a short time previously. This town, at that time called 'Ophir, ' contained in buildings, all counted, three canvas houses or tents, inhabited by about fifty persons, most of whom spread their blankets and slept nightly under the friendly shelter of some projecting rock or sage bush, cooking and living in the open air. "All were busily engaged in ' prospecting,' locating, and staking off lots and mining claims. "I suppose a more forbidding, dreary, desolate spot exists not on the face of the globe than the site of Virginia as it was in ' 59. Not a living thing grew on the barren, desert waste, if you except a. few, very few, stunted pine and cedar bushes, and Horace Greeley's ' everlasting sage brush,' interspersed by now and then-say, perhaps, ten to the acre-solitary blades of grass ; in short, not one attractive, but many repulsive features. Yet, on this naturally miserable spot, whose only redeeming, yet all-powerful feature, was the mineral hidden beneath its surface, has, in a little over four years, arisen a magnificent city, rivalling many, even very prosperous ones, on the Atlantic slope, of ten or even twenty years' growth.'' Gradually capital began to turn its attention to this unpromising region. The " Comstoc~ lode," which ~ad been discovered shortly before, came Into the possession of capitalists able to develop its resources, emigration commenced to set in, and things began to wear a promisino- appearance, when the Pi Ute war broke out, and progr~ss in any direction was suspended for a period of nearly three months. Th~ war ceased in. J ~ly, 1~60, since which time the Territory and the pnnc1pal pomts in it have grown apace. PHYSICAL ASPECT AND BOUNDARIES. Nevada forms the western side of the Great Basin, inclosed l;>y the Rocky Mountains on the east,. and t~e Sierra Nevada on the west ; the average elevation of Its valleys being at least five thousand feet above tidewater, while very little of it is as low a9 four thousand |
