The Comstock Lode lies in the Carson Valley in northwestern Nevada, on the side of Mount Davidson, where the towns of Virginia City and Gold Hill would mark its presence. It runs two and a half miles across the eastern face of the mountain, with significant mineral veins as deep as 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) below the surface. Beginning in 1859, the mines and mining operations associated with the deposits of the Comstock Lode were to be among the most significant in the history of mining. Between 1860 and 1880 alone, Comstock mines produced more than $300 million in gold and silver—the richest in the West at the time. Along with profits, the Comstock led to a series of innovations in mining technology that influenced mining across the length and breadth of the West.
The Comstock Lode had its origins in the enthusiasm for the Calieornia gold rush, whose riches produced a widespread search for similar gold deposits across the
American West. In the summer of 1859, Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin found the site of what would become the Orphir mine. The rush to the new El Dorado began with the discovery that the “blasted blue stuff’ that interfered with placer mining for gold turned out to be very rich silver ore. In the rush to the region that followed, prospectors and investors of varying degrees of skill would eventually register more than 17,000 claims, most of which were worthless. One-half of the Comstock’s ore production and almost four-fifths of the mining dividends came from pairs of adjacent mines: the Belcher and Crown Point and the California and Consolidated Virginia. Such odds of success, however, were much like those of other mining districts in the West.
The Comstock Lode was to be the West’s first great silver bonanza. Unlike the early CALIFORNIA experience, mining in the Comstock demanded large investments of capital, so the best claims soon passed into the hands of California entrepreneurs with capital to develop the sites. Because the ore lay deep underground in several major concentrations, experienced mining men and preparatory investment were required to bring it to the surface for processing. In this respect, the Comstock would become the first large mining enterprise in the West to resemble an industrial city. Furthermore, with investment demands that could be met only in San Francisco and other cities, the best mines in the Comstock were the property of absentee owners and developers almost from the beginning. The absentee nature of the exercise created all the benefits and disadvantages of such enterprise, and professionals on the site worked with shadowy and shady financial figures in San Francisco.
From the first ore discoveries in 1859, technology was crucial to opening the Comstock. The technical challenges silver mining posed were immense, simply because Americans had virtually no prior experience with the process. With huge stamp mills soon in operation, vast underground mining works, and complex operations to treat the crushed ore, the Comstock was a complex operation far removed from individual miners. The first major difficulty was how to prevent cave-ins in the deepening shaft. The solution was the “square-set” timbering process that permitted deep mining in unstable rock formations. The invention of Philip Deidesheimer, a German-born engineer, the technique quickly spread to underground mines everywhere in the West. Another technical problem desperate for resolution was physically hauling the extracted ore to the surface, a task made immeasurably more complicated by the great depths encountered. Traditional hemp ropes simply weighed too much, given the long length required, and they constituted a significant part of the breaking load. The solution came in 1864, when A. S. Hallide developed the first flat woven wire rope. Both much stronger and lighter than hemp, it enabled heavier loads to be brought up to the surface from greater depths. This device proved so handy that it subsequently powered San Francisco’s noted cable car system.
Very early in mining operations in the Comstock, large quantities of water had to be pumped out of the works by the Cornish pump. Pumping became a dire necessity at deeper intervals, where the water was scalding hot and deadly to any miner unfortunate enough to fall in the sumps. This required the development and installment of new and more efficient fans, blowers, and ventilation devices to keep workers constantly supplied with fresh, cool air. Otherwise, miners were reduced to work shifts of only one-half hour, the limit of human endurance at such temperatures. Prior to the addition of direct ventilation shafts, miners also received a daily allotment of 95 pounds of ice per man, which they would chew on to cool themselves between shifts.
Once the ore had been removed, it had to be separated and refined to extract the silver. The Mexican patio system of adobe smelting furnaces was employed initially for want of a better system, but at length the process proved too time-consuming. The system of crushing the ores with stamping mills was then employed in concert with steam-heated iron pans to hasten the process of amalgamation. Soon the pan-amalgamation process evolved to allow the separation of gold and silver ores quickly and cheaply.
Functional, efficient transportation to and from the mines was yet another technological obstacle that had to be addressed. At first, teams of horse - or mule-drawn wagons were employed to haul ore out to processing centers and then return with requisite supplies, but this system grew increasingly impractical as the rates of production increased. Improvement came in 1859, when the Central Pacific Railroad was completed. It ran through Reno, where the teams could drop off their cargoes for shipment to the East or West. This route was refined in 1869, when the new Virginia and Truckee Railroad ran a direct line from Virginia City to Reno and a direct connection to the Central Pacific. This modern transportation network facilitated the rapid shipment of tons of ore and completely eliminated the need for animal-powered hauling.
With the large capital investments and the rumors of the great profits to be made, the mines of the Comstock Lode soon made their appearance on the San Francisco Stock Exchange. Stocks in Comstock mines fluctuated wildly, producing some fortunes for the favored insiders, but whatever the results, the dramatic rises in the value of a few stocks kept the market in a state of continuous turmoil. The experience of the Comstock Lode first demonstrated that more money might be made in buying and selling shares of mining stocks than in actual mining operations. In this respect, the Comstock style of stock and stock manipulation would become a model for railroads and speculation in railroad stocks in the next generation.
Technical innovations contributed to the first boom period from 1860 to 1863, but then Comstock profits languished. However rich the silver ores—and they were very rich indeed—mining for them posed continuing difficulties: deep shafts, rising water, impossible heat, and poor ventilation. With the decline in production and the falling stock prices, officers in the Bank of California bought up large numbers of shares at low prices. With new discoveries in the early 1870s, the bankers were in a position to reap great profits, and they did.
Other mining entrepreneurs soon took control of the Comstock. The so-called “Silver Kings” combined practical mining experience with stock manipulation to gain control of the “Big Bonanza” mines that produced the next generation of great profits. From 1873 to 1882, these mines produced $105 million in silver bullion. The new discoveries were at astonishing depths, up to 3,000 feet underground. The technical difficulties of mining at such levels were notably eased by Adolph Sutro’s four-mile tunnel under Mt. Davidson. The tunnel offered ventilation, drainage, and easy access to ores. Various mine owners had opposed Sutro’s tunnel for a decade, fearful of the power that it would confer on him. Finally, with foreign capital, he completed the tunnel in 1878 and sold out the following year. Sutro’s exit with his fortune to San Francisco marked the beginning of the decline of the Comstock Lode. By 1880, the output and the profits were falling. Although exploration continued for years, the Comstock never recaptured its former leadership in silver mining.
The Comstock Lode had an impact on mining in the West that went beyond even its great profits. The technical knowledge acquired from mining at such deep levels and in processing the ores brought to the surface was transferred to mines all over the West. In this sense, the Comstock was a mining laboratory of exceptional significance, and the mining engineers who labored there would later open the great silver mines in Leadville and Aspen (Colorado), the next generation of silver bonanzas. Finally, the profits of the Comstock produced a group of mining entrepreneurs who would take their money and skills not only throughout the West but also around the world. The most important of these was George Hearst, who would go on to become the owner of the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, and an important figure in California politics.
The Comstock was also significant in the development of a mining city. Virginia City was the first great mining city: the political, financial, and social center of mining enterprise in Nevada. Indeed, it was Nevada’s most important site and mining its most important industry for a half century. Local editors and civic boosters declared that the population reached 30,000 in the bonanza years; the official census number from 1870 was 10,917. Not until the rise of legal gambling in the 20th century and the emergence of Reno and Las Vegas has any city been as influential in Nevada as Virginia City. By 1880, as the mines shut down, Virginia City had also declined. But for as long as it was productive, the Comstock Lode transformed that settlement into one of the most influential technical, financial, and social centers of the West.
Further reading: Dan DeQuille, The Big Bonanza (1876; reprint, New York: Knopf, 1947); Ronald M. James, The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998); Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 18481880 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1963).
World History
