Pioneer Pieces: Paramint

Nowhere else is the phrase "Greater than the Comstock" more often associated than with Paramint (but not for the reason you would think!)  Paramint was high up in the Paramint Mountains on the edge of Death Valley, with only the minimum background of mining resources.

In the mid-1870's the impact of the Comstock on the West was one of mass hysteria and it was into this that Paramint was born. 

The Silver Senators, Stewart and Jones along with Tenor Park, a San Francisco aristocrat, skillfully and manipulated Paramint shares.  Paramint soared in mining exchanges around the world and with nothing to prove their claim, they were great salesmen, however illegal they were.

Obviously Paramint was never greater than anything and after it folded people forgot about Paramint  and the entire idea of "Greater than the Comstock".  Like those imaginary bonanzas, the phrase never really found validation in recovered gold and silver.  It became, in later years near the turn of the century, more of a joke, a prediction of doom and failure.

A half century after those forgotten diggers thought the camp and city dead, Virginia City had been in business longer than all of them together!

Next time we go searching the West for more history...