The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 11, 1906, Page 11

HE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL merest ~keries forma rked e een beaten across 4, end under the feet t much © with, s0 patience of it had come he chipped f the ledge where he had camped, mere n accordance with the prospector's . And n his hand, upon the fresh tering up s of free and how he leaped, no one all guess— Butler s st how his heart Sy the Nevada Man- swift mira- f mon a few weeks of this year were six-mile length of M than thirty-five people. 7 uary there were, ac- optimistic census re- And today, just two re is @ flourishing mining shacks and real hous nd hotels and res d_newspc pers—and N5 and - gambl schoo! and a hospital, too, —with & MR and a population of betwe 4000 and 5000 people, of men and women—and of chil- do you know how all this came The site of Manhatt a little canyon Jong—little in comparison with nesszs of t desert country—and other little canyons that’ criss- that the casual traveler cross its s could never tell it from its brothers. Through this little canyon a highway the old road which ds from San 1 this highway has owledge at least for there are silver mont. At either end this little »ne to Belmont traveled to o anyon opens out upon the real country, the Carson desert at one Ralston desert at the other. It forty miles due north of Tonopah, t in the five years bee own to t world none of who have scrambled for t Tono- he riches of Goldfleld and thought it worth their this little can- r bench from the d highway that “gold has remained upon which its rough to the sun's heat da desert it is the nut pine gives sparingly to the scanty fare of pine ting place to a ¢ passing that way ng of last year. J. C. Humphrey is the cattleman, and ¥ s lived in t part of count T part of ng that even he forge times. his early spring day t year the was warm, and de of nut pines was pl ant, so T u stretched himself in it > eat his midday meal. He lounged a littlg, rolled his cigarette and smoked it FURULEAR AP UFRT FT5 T2 TS, and then getding up to go thought he'd break off a little of the rock—there being so “much gold in the countfy below, and it being true that after all “gold is where vou find it.” So he knocked off a vlece nonchalantly and not really expec anything, and held ft=-in his hand, the weather-beaten side down, the fresh sur- face turned up, and— Just as Jim Butler had done five years before at the ledge around which Touo- pah has grown, he gasped, and exclaimed, and looked again—for thére It was glit- tering with beautiful particles of free d, rich with.them. hen— He put his specimen in his pocket and went on looking up his cattle—and kept mum. He went back later and located some claims, and put some men to work there prospecting in the different ways known to the practical miner, and on the first of April of last year a “strike” was da made on the left side of the canyon. But it was not remarkable. The lttle hint that the desert gave up somehow did not hold a promise of riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Of course we know that there are fo riches that go beyond such dreams, that always the dream extends beyond the pile that any man ‘can scratch together in a lifctime, for haven't we our Rocke- feller still scratching on sans halr, sans 'l,.I’ Wi a [ o N e S % s teeth, sans stomacli—sans the love and respect of his fellow men. . However it still holds good as a figure of speech—though somewhat threadbare— and Cattleman Humphrey’s prospectors seeing no such promise went away. But the lure of gold is stronger than anything else and it drew them back in July, and the desert, coquetting with them, gave better promises—and better and bétter, not only to Cattleman Hum- phrey’s friends whom he had “let in” on his find, but followers of those friends who had smelled out something there. A rich strike was made that ran $300 to the ton, and richer ones here, there and another place up and down the six miles of canyon that set each man to scratch- ing and digging its surface like a ter: at a hole where he has seen a rat dis- appear. This was in July and August and Eep- tember of last year. Your trué prospector is cautious and secretive always, and so through Octo- ber, November, December and the first days of January the good news was passed along jealously, carefully, by word of mouth, and large, ambiguous phrase until on the 7th of January Manhattan numbered a population of just fifty. Then the promise was so radiant that the desert slipped the 1id off its secret so far that the find couldn't be kept for the few. e l{l/’/"/‘,\ \4\ 4\5’\;“’ " BROSPECTORS OUFF77 RS SN 29 A rnotos by Larsen. tne stampede to the new diggings and the real history of the camp began. In this little canyon through which the highway runs over which the desert traf- fic has gone on since 1860 they found gold in rough, crumbling particles that showed it had never moved an inch since nature in one of her transitions had deposited it there. They found the particles so free in the quartz that they could wash it out with a recker. They. took out one chunk weighing eighteen ounces with $208° of “wire’” gold in it, the ~irgin metal in a fine-spun form dellcately beautiful and telling its own story of waiting undis-: turbed through the ages while the gold seekers were hurrying past it. One experienced miner from Cripple Creek blasted out a place to set his cabin upon, a ledge, and built it and - settled himself domestically without Kknowing that he had Wjasted his home: right into a gold mine—that he could knock off specimens of black quartz running from $40 to $200 a step from his cabin door. ‘When it was pointed out to him it came with a shock that made him dizzy. Even the most discreet and selfish of men can't keep ‘this sort of thing to themselves, and'in the first days of Janu- ary the. tide set toward the little can— yon where the nut pines grew—and Man- hattan’s population went In leaps and bounds from fifty to a thousand, to two, to three, to four, and now to nearly 5000. The swiftness with which men—and women—act ‘when: caught by the gold fever, the hazards they take and the stakes they play can only be told by il- lustration. & - For example one man on speculation bent came into Manhattan on the stage from Tonopah that takes a day of rough traveling to cover the distance and paid $1700 for a night's lodging. There was one frame building at Man- hattan then—just one—a tiny 16-foot shack with the sign out Pioneer restaurant. He went into that; ordered his supper, waited for it to be cooked;, and sitting over it asked the ploneer restaurant-keeper—a woman—if she would sell. " “Yes, she sald. if she could get her price. ‘What was her price? . Seventeen hundreq dollars. And immediate possession? Yes—she'd turn it over to the buyer at once and move her restaurant stock in the morning. The bargain was made, the sale clinched, and a cash payment of $1200 planked down on the spot. The tired speculator had a snug place to sleep in that night, and the next morning he opened up a brokerage office for business by just wiping out the word “restaurant” from the sign and painting in after “pi- oneer” the words “Manhattan Brokerage Company.” As soon as the tide of travel turned toward the new camp the road from ‘Tonopah became a stream of life. The passenger stage runs in thres times a week loaded with passengers ready to fight for their places, feverish to get to the new scene of discovered treasure. Automobiles tear over the road, their raucous honk! honk! shattering the desert stillness into crystalline splinters. Frelghters toil along in continuous pro- cesslon. Movers with all their household goods vary the van like little beads among the big. Miners’ outfits, the two- wheeled carts with heterogeneous load drawn by a burro or two, the flanuel shirted, heavily booted owner prodding and plodding alongside give picturesque- ness and native character. Lumber wagons labor slowly cumbering the road. In this hurried immigration accommoda- tions were scarce and uncertain of course, and it was a common thing for newcom- ers, arriving at night, at eight, nine and even twelve o'clock to pitch camp on the first Yacant space, make their beds on the snow and cheerfully turn in, to find themselves when they awoke In the morning literally snowed under with a fresh fall. Building, of course, was not a thing to ponder over. Town lots fluctuated from $50 to $700 in price, and these who bullt upon them hurried out upon the road to meet the Incoming lumber wagons and outbid each other for the lumber. “In these competitions the successful man ‘was he who had learned the mining camp wisdom that anything vou need in camp is worth anything the fellow who has it asks for i{t—and as many have learned that, fabulous prices were pald. ‘With incredible swiftness ventures were engaged In, deals were made and values changed. The family that came in one night and slept upon the snow. the next night would be hammering the finishing touches upon a cabin, and already owners of claims or parts of claims. The prospector who was grudgingly grub-staked the week before would be asking $10,000 for his location in the morn- ing and refusing $20,000 for the half he still owned at night. B “Prices' go up,” says one of the Man- hattanites, “by adding another cipher or two to the original price, and properties keep changing hands and going up right along at that rate. Everything is on the surface yet, practically. No man knows what he really has, but things look so good that no price that is asked seems too much.” In this bare canyon where Nature of- fered nothing to man—not even a little trickling rivulet to wet his parched lips, and hid her treasures so jealously from him, there is now. sprung up in two short months, a six-mile long busy community of nearly 5000 people—a city of tents and frame bulldings. of most absorbing ac- tivity, and marvelous, unbelievable pros- perity. There are rows and rows of tents—lit- tle canvas homes and canvas places of business—shoulder to snou.der upon the town lots, on level above level upon the benches—numbering about 1000 in all ‘There are one-story, one-room houses, and two and three story many roomed houses, papered and painted if you please —over 400 of them run up all in the course of two months. There are three banks doing business. There are two weekly newspapers telling the news and pushing the rival interests of the camp. There is a hospital, established first un- der canvas and now in a snug frame building by an enterprising woman who is a traiped nurse and who knows something of the needs and possibilities of a mining camp. There is a schoolhouse for the children— and a school ma’am too, and children for her to teach—youngsters who spend their time out of school hours bob-sledding down snow-covered slopes that are still full of possibilities to the prospeetor. In Tonopah when it was decided to set up a school the story goes that certain promi- nent citizens went out on the highway to meet a family coming in and hurried them along so that there would be as many children as the law requires to war- rant a school. It was not necessary to do tHfs at Manhattan, for so rapid was the influx that there were quite enough chil- dren in the population to make it entitled to a school. There are saloons in profusion and “a game” going on in every saloon at which fortunes change hands as rapid- ly as they do on that bigger gamble— the mines. Stortes of how one man lost $37.000 in a night, shrugged his shoulders and went out to rustls up enough to sit in another game, of how another, grub-staked, located promis- ing claims., lost them on the turn of the cards and set out to find another grub-stake are already part of camp history. There is, of course, a tenderloin—in- evitable accompaniment of the mining camp—already established in the short two months, set apart at the lower end of the town. There is a miners’ union already or- sanized. There has not yet been any marriage or death In Manhattan. and only one birth—that of a baby burro—in so short a time has the city grown. but there is already afoot a plan for having it electric-lighted, for having it drained by sewers, for piping the water from Belmont—the water now being sold in barrels at the rate of $1.50 a barrel. Luxuries are not !mpossible there. With a mail service three times a week, a passenger as often, freight stages every day, automobiles running in as often as passengers at $20 a head want them, this little can- yon on the desert s no longer isolated, and even the bon vivant can be comn- soled. At a dinner given by ome frozen oysters were served, followed by striped bass, celery, sweetbread a la poulette and roast turkey. washed down by wine of special vintages and served on linen. It was eaten, to be sure, in a little bedroom. with two of the guests sitting on the bed—but it was nope the less a feast for all that. It is wonderful, isn't it that just because a wandering cattleman look- ing to the welfare of his stock should have chipped off a plece of rock and found some littla yellow particles gift- tering in it that six miles of silens desert should be s0