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Surveying in the Dark ~ Laurence Wrinkle

On the Comstock Lode

By: Paul S. Pace, PLS

Few chapters in Nevada’s history have captured the imagina-
tion of the world like the strike on the Comstock Lode. That
celebrated deposit, buried in the sage and pinion covered slopes
of the Virginia Range would birth the mining towns of Virginia
City, Gold Hill and Silver City and contribute to several more.
The numbers are remarkable: nearly seven million tons of ore
were mined from the Lode, by hand, between 1860 and 1880.
Peak production on this world-class gold and silver deposit was
achieved in 1877, yielding $35,000,000 in precious metals, in
1880 Dollars. The last half of the 19 Century, and no small
1
th
part of the early 20 , was alive with constant news from the
th
mines on the flanks of Mount Davidson. New discoveries, stock
sales, dividends paid and assessments levied were published
daily in newspapers across the country.
San Francisco, above all other cities, was built on the sweat of
miners and the Lode’s wealth, streaming into California’s banks.
Still, the Comstock played an important role in the formation of
the future State of Nevada, as well. It’s expanding infrastructure
helped build the state. The Central Pacific Railroad chose the cen-
tral route through the Sierra, because of the Comstock Lode.
Included in this huge undertaking were engineering and mining
innovations that impacted first the local, then later the global, min- The tunnel and cars loaded with ore, with a stack of timbers cut for square
sets, from the Gould & Curry Mine, Virginia City, 1870, by
ing industry. Among them number the Virginia & Truckee Railroad Thomas Houseworth & Co.
(V&TRR), the Marlette Water System and more broadly, the inven-
tion of square-set timbering and the pan amalgamation technique for extracting silver, known as the Washoe Process. Equally of note was
the use of water powered electric generators in the 1880’s to lower production costs and allow the mining of lower-grade ores.
Beyond the unnamed legions of miners risking their lives daily in the Comstock’s depths, were two classes of individuals who rose to
prominence on the Lode. The first were the “practical men”, the likes of John Mackay. Industrious and hard-working, he taught himself
2
how to drill and blast, set timbers and to know what ground was good or bad, good ore or waste rock.
An Irish immigrant who came to the U.S. with his family in 1840, Mackay reached the gold fields of California in 1851, at the age of
twenty years. With no formal education and a severe stutter as a youth, his arrival on the Comstock Lode gave his native intelligence a
place to thrive. One might say that Mackay and those like him, many of them European immigrants, were students at the Comstock’s
School of Hard Labor. Dan DeQuille, the American writer and journalist, wrote of these men, “Men who were graduated on the Comstock
are now to be found in all parts of the world. They early went to Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and British Co-
lumbia…Comstock foremen and superintendents are to-day in charge of mines in Mexico, Central America, South America, Australia, Africa, China,
Japan, and all other regions where there is mining for the precious metals.” People came from all over the world to mine in Nevada. The 1870
3
U.S. Census showed that Nevada had more foreign-born residents per capita, than any other state in the Union. 4
The other class could be called the “professionals”, kindly known as the “Lace Boot Brigade” , those who had graduated from universi-
5
ties or institutes and who were drawn to the Comstock to resolve its ever-present and ever-growing challenges. There are scores of
both kinds to be found in the history of Nevada’s mining heritage, but on the Comstock CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE u

1 Lord, Eliot; Comstock Mining & Miners: The Comprehensive History of Virginia City’s Mining Industry, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1883. The 2023
value for $35M is roughly $1,035,710,000 today.
² The Mackay School of Engineering and Earth Sciences, formerly the Mackay School of Mines, is named in John Mackay’s honor.
3 DeQuille, Dan, A History of the Comstock Silver Lode & Mines, Virginia City, Nevada , F. Boegle, 1889, pg. 45
4 Quote from Ron James, Nevada historian
5 Spence, Clark C., Mining Engineers & the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade, 1849-1933, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970

The Nevada Traverse Vol.50, No.2, 2023 7