What's That Stuff??

Henry T. P. Comstock was a natural at loafing - but he was an old hand at prospecting.  In June 1859 he was riding his mule along the eastern Sierras in now Nevada when he came across a spring, Old Man Caldwell''s with two prospectors working, Peter O'Riley and Patrick McLaughlin.

Dan DeQuille documented what happened, "Comstock saw at a glance the unusual quantity of gold that was in sight.  He was soon running his fingers through the gold and picking into the mass of strange looking "stuff" exposed.  Conceiving at once that a wonderful discovery had been made, he straightened himself up and coolly proceeded to inform the astonished miners that they were working on land that belonged to him."

Comstock was claiming the land, not only for himself, but also for his partners, "Old Virginian" Finney, and Manny Penrod.  "Old Pancake" as Comstock was called convinced the miners to join his partners and him in a five-man partnership to work the lode.  Comstock soon bought out Finney's share for a bottle of booze and a blind horse, by the way.

The partners found some gold, but they soon found a vein of heavy bluish quartz from which the metal was extremely difficult to extract.  They sent some to an assayer in California who found that each sample contained $1000 in gold and $3000 in silver.  The two original miners had stumbled across one of the richest sources of precious metals ever found!

Soon the entire surrounding area became known as the "Comstock Lode" because Comstock spent most of his time bragging about "his mine" and "his gold".  By 1860, there were 10,000 prospectors in Virginia City (named after Old Finney).  The town had 154 businesses including a theater, a music hall, four butcher shops, and eight law offices.  Six physicians kept busy polluting the water with significant traces of arsenic along with the gold and silver...can't make this stuff up!

Next time...Silver fever explodes
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 1, 1774, dissenting British minister Joseph Priestly, author of Observations on Civil Liberty and the Nature and Justice of the War with America, discovers oxygen while serving as a tutor to the sons of American sympathizer William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, at Bowood House in Wiltshire, England.