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in particular, because of among other things, the extremely difficult
underground environment. Every year the depths of the mines
increased, exposing the miners to more frequent fires, scalding hot
water, debilitating heat, poorly lit and very poorly ventilated work
spaces. Added to that litany of harsh realities was the Comstock’s
notoriously “heavy ground”, weak and stressed rock that repeatedly
failed, killing a great many miners from the cave-ins.
Mining engineers, in those times, routinely practiced underground
surveying and mapping. Surveyors, per se, were generally limited
to boundary/cadastral surveys. But it is interesting that some of
the mine engineers became mine and mineral surveyors, more as
a rule. It was a niche expertise that allowed them to prosper in an
area where there was a constant need.
One such person was Isaac Evan James, a graduate civil engineer
from Granville College in Ohio. After stints with the Bellfontain &
Indiana Railroad and as County Surveyor in Sierra County, Cali-
fornia, he relocated to Virginia City in 1860, joining the “Rush to
Washoe”. In 1869 James surveyed the route of the V&TRR through
the Virginia Range, down to the mills along the Carson River and
into Carson City. In 1872 he ran the rail line from Carson City to
“Cave-in at Comstock Mine, Virginia City, Nevada”, Timothy H. O’Sullivan,
1868, illustrating a tangle of square sets and debris from the cave-in. Reno and was later named Chief Engineer of the railroad.
He laid out the preliminary route for the Lake Tahoe Railroad from Glenbrook to Spooner’s
Summit in 1874, and surveyed and monumented Nevada’s eastern boundary with Utah.
Later, James was elected County Surveyor for Storey County. In 1880, he was a consultant
for the Carson & Colorado Railroad, the narrow gauge heading from the V&TRR’s station at
Mound House to Candelaria, Nevada and points south.

“Ike” James spent years surveying mining claims, underground workings and as superin-
tendent for some of the most productive mines in the area. James was also called upon
numerous times as an expert witness in the blizzard of mining litigation so prevalent on the
Comstock. He was usually held in high esteem by the local newspapers. The newspaper
in Carson City wrote, “The Survey of the disputed lines between the Crown Point and the
Belcher mines, which is conducted by Mr. Ike James, is very nearly completed. It is safe to
say that when Mr. James has declared the result of his investigations there will be no need
for further mensuration.”
6
Others included Gotth Haist, a German born civil engineer. He had been an officer in the Isaac Evan “Ike” James, from the
History of Nevada
Prussian Army and came to the U.S. in 1846. When he arrived on the west coast he was
employed by Lieutenant John C. Fremont as an express rider carrying military dispatches from Monterey, California during the Mexican
War. After arriving in Virginia City in 1863, Haist made his living largely as a U.S. Mineral Surveyor. He worked there until the year before
his death. When he and his wife Maggie checked into the Lake House boarding establishment on their frequent visits to Reno, Gotth
listed his occupation as “surveyor”.
Haist, in business for himself for years, eventually went into a partner-
ship with J. G. Mather, another local surveyor. In April of 1881, Haist and
Andrew J. Mackay, a Virginia City builder-architect, were selected to design
the magnificent State Hospital building on the site of what is still today’s
State Hospital at Glendale Avenue and Galletti Way in Sparks, Nevada.
Mackay, no known relation to John Mackay, designed several famous
houses in Virginia City. Haist ran and lost the election for Surveyor Gen-
7
eral in 1874. 8
Gotth Haist was elected Vice President of the Nevada State Association of
Civil Engineers and Surveyors at the organization’s annual meeting in Carson

6 The Carson City Appeal, September 26, 1873
7 The Piper-Clegg House, built in 1876, is the only one of Mackay’s houses to
survive.
Haist’s map of the American mining claim, U.S. Survey 137, and 8 Hendrik, Kim, The People of Nevada’s Early Mental Health System, Footprints,
the conflict in overlapping the patented Silver City townsite
Reno, Nevada, Spring, 2002.
8 The Nevada Traverse Vol.50, No.2, 2023