Virginia City's Celebrities

There were a couple of celebrity characters in Virginia City in the 1860s and 1870s.  One involved the Territorial Enterprise, a freewheeling, uninhibited, frontier piece of journalism run by Joseph T Goodman and Dennis McCarthy.  One of their first reporters was a young man of 30 named Samuel Clemens, who had began using the pen name of Mark Twain in 1863.  Sam was not content to stick to bare bone facts.  Better yet, he liked to let his imagination take flight as he did with his 1865 short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".  Twain was on his way - reporting for the highly successful Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City by 1870.

Another character of Virginia City arrived  in 1864.  A famous actress, Adah Isaacs Menken was persuaded to come to Virginia City to perform by Tom Maguire, who owned the local opera house.  Legends of her past proceeded her and the townspeople were thrilled at the prospect of her arrival.

Menken's Jewish parents were from New Orleans where Adah learned French, German, Spanish and Hebrew and translated Homer's Iliad from Greek.  She was skilled in dancing, singing and riding.  She matured into an uninhibited and temperamental beauty and launched two separate careers.  As a poetress, she won praise from poets and her friends included Charles Dickens and Walt Whitman.  As an actress, she was all the rave in London, Paris and New York and the American West.

Menken's most sensational role was in Mazeppa, which played to a standing room only crowd in Virginia City.  She disrobed on stage (actually wearing flesh colored tights) and was tied to a snorting horse.  Proper Victorians were shocked of course, but enthusiastic Virginia City miners made her an honorary fireman.  Mark Twain compared the act to acrobatics rather than acting in the Territorial Enterprise. 

Adah was married four times (Isaacs her second husband, Menken her fourth) and responding to gossip about her love affairs, she said, "I never lived with Houston, it was General Jackson and Methuselah and other big men." 

Next time..The Stagecoach Cometh
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  " On August 10, 1846, the Smithsonian is created after a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist.   President James K. Polk signed the Smithsonian Institution Act into law.

16 Tons and What Do You Get?

One of the earliest to arrive at the Comstock diggings in Nevada was George Hearst, California entrepreneur and father of the future newspaper tycoon.  George paid $3500 for the original miner's, McLaughlin's,  share of the mine and it was returned to him thousands of times over.  Henry Comstock sold out for $10,000 while the other original miner, O'Riley,  was a better businessman who held out for $40,000. 

Most of those who came to Virginia City did very little mining, but rather bought and sold claims instead.  The quartz and silver deeply embedded in the mines took machinery to extract and miners for the most part lacked the equipment.  One prospector said, "Nobody had any money, yet everybody was a millionaire in silver claims.  Nobody had any credit, yet everybody bought thousands of feet of glittering ore."  Occasionally someone made a real killing in the speculation - one easterner turned a $1000 investment into $20,000 in just a few months without ever lifting a pick and shovel.

Gradually the fever subsided and the smart money from San Francisco arrived, claims were bought, consolidated and the heavy mining machinery moved in.  By 1870, shafts had been dug thousands of feet into the mountains.  Deep underground, in only shoes and breechclouts, miners labored in 120 degree temperatures while steamy water bubbled up around their feet from thermal springs.  There were occasional deaths, but the men came through for the most part. 

The cost of labor was high, but the profits for the mine owners were even higher.  Gold and silver from the Nevada mines helped finance the Union army during the Civil War.  Before it gave out, the Comstock had given over $300 million in precious metals.

Next time...A couple of Virginia City characters...
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  "On August 7, 1869, George Davidson, a prominent astronomer and explorer, impresses Alaskan Native Americans with his ability to predict a total solar eclipse.
  
 

Pioneer Pieces: Virginia City Culture?

Virginia City, Nevada was like any other mining town with its hotels, saloons, fire stations, brothels and residents rising rapidly.  But Virgina City had something the rest of the mining towns didn't - culture.

The best road companies in theater played at Piper's Opera House and the Allambra of Virginia City.  It is recorded that at one time six Shakespearean plays were playing in the city, along with minstrel shows, tent shows, raree shows, and dog and pony shows.

Until 1875, Virginia City a mining town that had grown to 25,000 people, was THE place to be in the Old West.  Celebrities were frequent visitors and nothing was spared to celebrate the riches of Nevada's silver mines.

Next time...what happened in Virginia City in 1875?

Pioneer Pieces: The Cosmopolis of the West

In the space of a few weeks in the early 1850s, Virginia City grew from a flophouse and saloon to a bustling community of  5000-15,000 people.  Like any mining town, it was a rough sort.  Most legends involve a character of sorts in the Old West.  With Virginia City however, there was a group of characters that have made their mark in Nevada mining history.

In Virginia City, the fire companies were thought of as a "aristocratic group" that was part military, part social, and part political.  In this case, the fire company of Virginia City was a great asset to the Union Army during the Civil War.  Their job? To keep the residents of Virginia City from developing any southern sympathies to the Confederacy.  They secured the loyalties to the Union of all of Virginia City's population - at least that's the legend that survived.

More about Virginia City next time...