Comstock Lode
The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada, which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States and named after Canadian miner Henry Comstock.
After the discovery was made public in 1859, it sparked a silver rush of prospectors to the area, scrambling to stake their claims. The discovery caused considerable excitement in California and throughout the United States, the greatest since the California Gold Rush in 1849. Mining camps soon thrived in the vicinity, which became bustling commercial centers, including Virginia City and Gold Hill.
The Comstock Lode is notable not just for the immense fortunes it generated and the large role those fortunes had in the growth of Nevada and San Francisco, but also for the advances in mining technology that it spurred, such as square set timbering and the Washoe process for extracting silver from ore. The mines declined after 1874, although underground mining continued sporadically into the 1920s.
Geology
Volcanic vents to the east covered the area during the Tertiary, and a fault fissure opened the east slope of the Virginia Range. The east slope of the range forms the footwall of the Lode, and is composed of diorite, while the hanging wall is composed of andesite, which the miners called "porphyry". The fault fissures filled these fissures with "mineral-bearing quartz".The miners stated "porphyry makes ore". The ore bodies were thinly scattered through the wide Lode "like plums in a charity pudding", and nearly all of them were found in the wide upper section and along or near the east wall. Although the miners extended their work in all directions, only "sixteen large and rich ore bodies" were found, most less than in depth.
Bonanzas
Six major bonanzas marked the first five years of the Comstock Lode. The Ophir bonanza was prosperous until 1864, producing 70,000 tons. Though rich, and having a length of at the surface, the ore body wedged out at a depth of. The Gould & Curry bonanza included of the El Dorado outcrop, but dipped southward into the Savage at ; the ore gave out by 1866. The Savage bonanza included this ore body and a second bonanza, an ore body shared with Hale & Norcross to the south, at the 600 foot level; this ore body was played out by 1869. The Chollar-Potosi bonanza was consolidated in 1865. The 1875 Combination Shaft was a joint effort by Chollar-Potosi and Hale & Norcross.The Original Gold Hill bonanza consisted of the Old Red Ledge, long, wide, and deep. The associated Gold Hill mines were merged into the Consolidated Imperial by 1876. The Yellow Jacket shared the Gold Hill bonanza on its north, and shared a second bonanza with Crown Point and Kentucky to the south, discovered in 1864.
The Crown Point-Belcher bonanza was discovered in 1870. The ore body extended from the 900 to the 1,500-foot level, having a length of and a width of. The ore, the precious metal value of which was 54 percent from gold and 46 percent from silver, lasted only four years.
The Consolidated Virginia bonanza was discovered at the 1,200-foot level in March 1873. The ore body was long and wide, but terminated at the 1650-foot level.
Discovery of silver
Gold was found in this region in the spring of 1850, in Gold Canyon, by a company of Mormon emigrants, one of whom, Abner Blackburn, was their guide. After arriving much too early to cross the Sierra, the wagon train camped on the Carson River in the vicinity of Dayton, to wait for the mountain snow to melt. William Prouse soon found gold along the gravel river banks by panning, but left when the mountains were passable, as they anticipated taking out more gold on reaching California. Orr named the gulch Gold Cañón.Other emigrants followed, camped in the canyon and went to work at mining. However, when the supply of water in the canyon gave out toward the end of summer, they continued across the mountains to California. The camp had no permanent population until the winter and spring of 1852–53, when about 100 men worked part of the year along the gravel banks of the canyon with rockers, Long Toms and sluices. After nine years, the Gold Canyon placers were producing less, and many miners left for the Mono Lake placers.
The gold from Gold Canyon came from quartz veins, toward the head of the vein, in the vicinity of where Silver City and Gold Hill now stand. As the miners worked their way up the stream, they founded the town of Johntown on a plateau. In 1857, the Johntown miners found gold in Six-Mile Canyon, which is about five miles north of Gold Canyon. The heads of both these canyons form the north and south ends of what is now known as the Comstock Lode, defined by the Ophir Discovery and the Gold Hill Discovery. The early placer miners never worked out the location of the placer gold, since the Lode surface structure was "largely worn away and covered with debris from the mountain sides above."
Grosh brothers
Credit for the discovery of the Comstock Lode is disputed. It is said to have been discovered, in 1857, by Ethan Allen Grosh and Hosea Ballou Grosh, sons of Pennsylvania clergyman Aaron B. Grosh, trained mineralogists and veterans of the California gold fields. Hosea injured his foot and died of sepsis in 1857. In an effort to raise funds, Allen, accompanied by an associate, Richard Maurice Bucke, set out on a trek to California with samples and maps of his claim.Henry Comstock was left in their stead to care for the Grosh cabin and a locked chest containing silver and gold ore samples and documents of the discovery. Grosh and Bucke never made it to California. They suffered from frostbite while crossing the Sierra Nevada and lost limbs by amputation in a last-ditch effort to save their lives. Grosh died on December 19, 1857. Bucke lived, but upon his recovery returned to his home in Canada.
When Comstock learned of the death of the Grosh brothers, he claimed the cabin and the lands as his own. He also examined the contents of the trunk but thought nothing of the documents as he was not an educated man. What he did know is that the gold and the silver ore samples were from the same vein. He continued to seek out diggings of local miners working in the area, as he knew the Grosh brothers' find was still unclaimed. Upon learning of a strike on Gold Hill which uncovered some bluish rock, Comstock immediately filed for an unclaimed tract directly adjacent to this area.
Gold Hill Discovery
Four miners discovered the Gold Hill outcropping, at the head of Gold Canyon, making placer claims after finding traces of gold on January 28, 1859. They were James Finney, John Bishop, Aleck Henderson, and Jack Yount.These claims were followed by claims from Lemuel S. "Sandy" Bowers, Joseph Plato, Henry Comstock, James Rogers, and William Knight. In the spring of 1859, after digging down to a depth of about ten feet, they found a gold-rich reddish quartz vein. Their discovery was actually part of the Comstock Lode, the Old Red Ledge. The four men are therefore credited with the rediscovery of the mine previously found by the Grosh brothers.
Ophir discovery
In the spring of 1859, two miners, Peter O'Riley and Patrick McLaughlin, finding all the paying ground already claimed, went to the head of Six Mile Canyon and began prospecting with a rocker on the slope of the mountain near a small stream fed from a neighboring spring. They had poor results in the top dirt as there was no washed gravel, and they were about to abandon their claim when they made the great discovery.They sank a small, deeper pit in which to collect water to use in their rockers. In the bottom of this hole was a "layer of rich black sand", "concentrate from the top of the hidden Ophir bonanza". Henry T. P. Comstock learned of the two men working on land that he allegedly had already claimed for "grazing purposes". Unhappy with his current claim on Gold Hill, Comstock made threats and managed to work himself and his partner, Immanuel "Manny" Penrod, into a deal that granted them interest on the claim.
On June 12, a trench they were digging exposed black manganese sand mixed with bluish-gray quartz and gold. Two arrastras built by John D. Winters and J. A. Osborn made them additional partners on June 22. Comstock and Penrod made an additional claim, called the "Mexican", but later called the "Spanish", adjacent to the "Ophir" claim.
With the "blue stuff" found in this trench, silver mining in America was born. In the rocker, along with the gold, was a large quantity of heavy blue-black material almost like putty that clogged the rocker and interfered with the washing out of the fine gold. When assayed on June 27, it was determined to be a rich sulfide of silver; in fact, the ore was three fourths silver to one fourth gold.
The geographic accounts on the location of the Comstock Lode were muddled and inconsistent. In one report, the gold strike was "on the Eastern fork of Walker's river" and the silver strike "about halfway up the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada" and "nine miles West of Carson River."
Fate of the discoverers
The miners who discovered the mines, and the investors who bought their claims, did not know whether they had made a small or large strike. The size, richness, and cost of exploiting a buried ore body is very hard to estimate even today. Most of them assumed they had made a small to modest strike like nearly all other gold strikes.All of them knew they did not have the money or expertise to investigate the strike thoroughly. The size of the strike and its potential value would take many years of extensive work by thousands of miners and the investments of millions of dollars—which none of them had. "Weighing the chances of gain and loss as they stood in 1859 the prospectors had no cause to reproach themselves with lack of foresight."
Patrick McLaughlin sold his 1/6 interest in the Ophir claim for $3,000 to George Hearst. McLaughlin soon lost the money. He then worked as a cook at the Green mine in California. He died working odd jobs.
Emanuel Penrod, partner to Henry Comstock, sold his 1/6 share of the Ophir mine for $5,500 to Judge James Walsh, and his half interest in the "Spanish" mine for $3,000, for a total of $8,500.
J.A. Osborn sold his 1/6 of the Ophir "for a good price".
Peter O'Riley held on to his Ophir interests collecting dividends, until selling for about $40,000. He erected a stone hotel on B Street in Virginia City called the Virginia House, and became a dealer of mining stocks. He began having visions and began a tunnel into the Sierras near Genoa, Nevada, expecting to strike a richer vein than the Comstock. He eventually lost everything, was declared insane, and died in a private asylum in Woodbridge, California.
Henry Comstock traded an old blind horse and a bottle of whiskey for a one-tenth share of the spring at Ophir, formerly owned by James Fennimore, but later sold all of his Ophir holdings to Judge James Walsh for $11,000. Comstock also sold his half of the "Spanish" mine for $5,500. He opened trade good stores in Carson City and Silver City. Being reportedly slow mentally, having no education and no business experience, he went broke. After losing nearly all his property and possessions in Nevada, Comstock prospected for some years in Idaho and Montana without success. In September 1870, while in Bozeman, Montana, he died of a gunshot wound, believed to be a suicide.