Searchlight

The Camp That Didn'T Fail

Harry Reid

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780874174229
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Deep in the desolate Mojave Desert in Nevada's extreme southern tip lies a small mining town called Searchlight. This meticulously researched book by Searchlight's most distinguished native son recounts the colorful history of the town and the lives of the hardy people who built it and sustained a community in one of the least hospitable environments in the United States. Its story encompasses both Nevada's early twentieth-century mining boom and the phenomenal growth of southern Nevada after World War II. Searchlight is a valuable contribution to the history of Nevada and a lively account of life in the forbidding depths of the Mojave Desert.<br> <br>

1

THE BEGINNING

Searchlight is like many Nevada towns and cities: it would never have come to be had gold not been discovered. Situated on rocky, windy, and arid terrain without artesian wells or surface water of any kind, the place we call Searchlight was not a gathering spot for Indian or animal.

Only fourteen miles to the east is the Colorado River. Ten miles to the west is a modest mountain range, with fragrant cedars, stately pines, and a few sheltered meadows, home to an ancient Indian camp referred to as Crescent. To the northeast lies the canyon called Eldorado. In the eighteenth century the Spaniards explored and then mined this area.¹ The same location was exploited by Brigham Young, who directed some of his Mormon followers to present-day Nevada in search of minerals for his Utah civilization.² To the southwest, about fifteen miles distant, is the site of a U.S. military frontier outpost, Fort Piute or Piute Springs.

The mighty Colorado River was used for various routes along the navigable portion of its course. The main impediment to through passage from the north was the Grand Canyon, but the river was usable for about a hundred miles above Searchlight to as far south as the border of present-day Mexico.

During the Civil War the U.S. military tried to find better routes for moving men and supplies. Captain George Price, who had been commissioned by his superiors to find an easier route from the area of Salt Lake City to the southern part of the Utah Territory, led one such effort.³ He left Camp Douglas, near Salt Lake, on May 9, 1864, and worked his way south to Fort Mojave, near what is now Laughlin, Nevada. The trip was uneventful until he reached present-day Cedar City, Utah. The route over the desert from there to Las Vegas was extremely harsh and inhospitable. From Las Vegas to Eldorado was easier, but the journey from Eldorado to Fort Mojave was particularly brutal. The route then proceeded to Lewis Holes, an area west of Piute Springs named after Nat Lewis, an early Eldorado Canyon miner.⁴ After arriving at Fort Mojave, Captain Price declared that the route was unsafe and unsuitable for military use.

As an interesting note, during Price’s journey his company came upon a stray cow at a watering spot near Lewis Holes and a place called Government Wells. Price’s men killed and ate the cow, and the watering hole was formally named Stray Cow Wells in recognition of the event.⁵

The accepted route that Captain Price and others traveled was called the Eldorado Canyon Road, which went from Eldorado Canyon to the Lanfair Valley and wound its way through the Castle Mountains, ending at Lewis Holes. Many prospectors traveled over the road, but written accounts have focused on the conditions of travel rather than describing the trail itself.⁶

This pioneer route came very close to present-day Searchlight. As Dennis Casebier points out in his Mojave Road Guide, “Eldorado Canyon is usually a dry side canyon coming in to the Colorado River from the west about 25 miles below Hoover Dam. The route to the mines in the Canyon from Los Angeles took the Mojave Road to this point. From here the road angled off to the northeast via Lewis Holes toward the present Searchlight, then turned northward to Eldorado Canyon. Connections were developed from the Eldorado Canyon to Las Vegas and the main Salt Lake Trail. This point was a major road junction of the day. Here travelers had to decide whether to go northeast toward Utah or continue directly east on the Mojave Road toward Arizona and New Mexico. This intersection fulfilled the same purpose as the present junction of 1-15 and 1-40 in Barstow, California.”

Eldorado Canyon was the object of Anglo exploration long before Brigham Young’s forays and the U.S. Army’s expeditions, however. Clearly, the first white man to pass through or near Searchlight was Father Francisco Garcés in 1776. He left no physical sign of his passing, but his journals are sufficiently detailed to indicate that he came near the town.⁷

Several of the mines in Eldorado Canyon have a long unwritten history that some believe goes back two centuries. Even though there is no written account of any Spanish or Mexican mining enterprise in the canyon, it is clear that such activity did take place. John Townley reports that mining likely went on there between 1750 and 1850. The mining operations never spilled over into Searchlight, but the explorations came very close.⁸

From its earliest days, Searchlight had significant interaction with Eldorado Canyon. By the time Searchlight was founded, Eldorado had long been in operation. The contact was closest before the railroad came to Searchlight, when the mines and the people depended more on the river. The landing at the mouth of Eldorado Canyon was more important to the mines, however, than the river at Cottonwood was to Searchlight.

Reports like the following from a conversation with John Riggs contrast the operations in Eldorado and Searchlight: “John Powers, who is still living and who at one time owned the Wall Street Mine, told me one evening about 1882 that an outfit of Mexicans of the better class rode up to his camp at the Wall Street, and asked him if he owned the mine. He replied that he did. They then said that they had a very old map of this country and that the Wall Street was marked on the map. The map was evidently correct as they had come straight to the mine. They stated that the map had been made very long ago, probably by early Spaniards.”⁹ The Wall Street was one of the big producers of gold in Eldorado Canyon for many years. Conversely, no mine in Searchlight, with perhaps the exception of the Quartet, was worked successfully for more than ten years.

Though we do not know when the activity in Eldorado Canyon actually began, we do know that the mining district had a hectic and eventful history in the latter part of the nineteenth century. One account puts as many as 1,500 people there during the Civil War.¹⁰

The first documented records of contemporary mining in the Searchlight area were provided by a mining company called Piute, which was formed in 1870. This company owned 130 mines in California and in southeastern Nevada. The most prominent of the Nevada mines was the Crescent, located about ten miles west of Searchlight. The company’s promotional documents described a road that passed near present-day Searchlight and went to Cottonwood Island, below Searchlight on the Colorado River. The road was said to be favorable, with a broad, smooth path, much of it along a dry ravine.¹¹

In the early 1870s, a promoter named Johnny Moss attempted to develop a city just off Cottonwood Island. The town, which would be called Piute, was to be the freight head for the mines headquartered at Ivanpah, some forty miles to the west. The project never went beyond an artist’s rendering, however. The proposed mines were later developed, but San Bernardino rather than Ivanpah emerged as the shipping terminus.¹²

Indians traveled from the mountains above Searchlight to the river, creating relatively extensive foot traffic near the town’s present location, and miners passed through the area in their never-ending quest for the gold and silver of their dreams.

When Searchlight was established at the end of the nineteenth century, the mining camp with the unusual name had a very primitive infrastructure, but it swiftly became modern. Within a few years Searchlight was as fashionable as any western town of its day. Its amenities were noticeably contemporary. A modern water system was quickly created, incorporating pumping facilities, a new storage tank, piping, fire hydrants, and meters. The town even had a telephone system, which for the time was very advanced, and a telegraph system. An outdated railroad was soon replaced by a more modern line that included passenger travel. Surprisingly, early Searchlight had a modern system of electricity and its own power plant.

The places of business in town were many and varied, including a barbershop, several saloons and hotels, a lumberyard, clothing stores, sundry shops, cafes, union halls, boardinghouses, schools, garages, and stables. The town even boasted a hospital with doctors and, of course, a newspaper or two.

When the mines’ production waned after 1908, the businesses slowly began to cut back and in many instances simply failed. The decline, though sporadic, was technologically regressive. By the late 1940s and 1950s there was very little left of the modern Searchlight. Fires and a lack of prosperity had ravaged the once thriving community, and now there were no barbershops, no hotel, no lumberyard, no clothing store, no sundry shops, no union hall, and not even the trace of a union. Of course, the need for a hospital had long since ceased. There was no doctor, not even on a part-time basis.

In the town’s early days, especially with the coming of the railroad, the grocery stores carried a full line of food and merchandise. Fresh produce came from the farms around the area, including the river and Lanfair Valley, and beef came by rail, stage, and truck, as well as from the nearby ranches. Near its beginning, Searchlight had its own dairy, but the dairy and the farms didn’t survive for long. A handful of ranches operated until the early 1990s, when arrangements were made to ban all cattle grazing from the area in order to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act.

Searchlight may have not been favored by nature, but in the years after gold was discovered, this desert place developed into a microcosm of a frontier settlement worthy of historical study.

2

MONEY FROM MASSACHUSETTS

The first accounts of the area around present-day Searchlight came from nearby Summit Springs, which, except for the workings at Eldorado Canyon twenty miles north, was the main center of habitation. The site was believed to be about three miles east of Searchlight, probably at what is now known as Red Well, which is just off the blacktop road to Cottonwood Cove, part of the new Lake Mohave formed after the construction of Davis Dam.

More than a century before the discovery of gold at Searchlight, prospectors combed the entire desert west of the Colorado River for numerous minerals and hard metals, including gold, virtually without success. They found float (loose rocks that when panned showed some value) in some of the washes, but no outcroppings of ore surfaced.

The discovery in Searchlight did not result from this initial investigation. The area had been closely prospected for many years; in Eldorado Canyon mineral exploration had been routinely conducted since the days of Spanish rule. The Colorado River, relatively close to Searchlight, had been freely navigated during the nineteenth century. The intercontinental railroad (the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe) was built only twenty-eight miles to the south, and the U.S. Army and the U.S. mail were moved over the pass near Piute Springs even before the Civil War. So the geography of Searchlight was not unexplored territory.

Some dispute exists as to whether the mining camp that would become Searchlight was discovered in 1896 or 1897. The latter date has been commonly used for almost a hundred years, principally because all federal government publications used it. The pioneers who settled Searchlight and their descendants later disputed that claim and have advocated the earlier date.

It seems clear that Fred Dunn, of Needles, California, about fifty miles south of Searchlight, had for many years corresponded with various eastern capitalists to secure investments in his mining properties. One of those with whom he communicated was a Boston investor named Colonel C. A. Hopkins. In one of Dunn’s letters, Hopkins read a description of the Sheep Trail Mine, near Needles. The colonel replied to Dunn, expressing interest in the claim, but by the time the mail was delivered to Dunn, the Sheep Trail Mine was no longer available for purchase.

Dunn again wrote to Hopkins in Boston and told him that although he had been unable to secure an option on the property Hopkins originally desired, other mining claims were available. When he wrote the letter, however, Dunn actually had no properties to offer, so he hired John C. Swickard to locate claims for the consideration of $1 per claim. Swickard began work immediately, concentrating his efforts in the Crescent and present-day Searchlight areas. At that time the Crescent Mountains, ten miles west of Searchlight, were the site of vigorous mining activity because of significant recent discoveries of turquoise. So the general Searchlight area was being investigated with some success before 1896.

When Dunn believed he had enough claims to interest Hopkins, he invited him to come for a visit to inspect the property.¹ Hopkins came to the prospected area but purchased nothing, though he did retain Dunn to look for other properties.

Hopkins exhibited interest in the area around Searchlight because of the preponderance of low-grade ore, which was more than enough to intrigue him. Unfortunately for Hopkins, although Dunn had retained Swickard, the latter owned almost all the property that would eventually make up the claims that became the famous Quartette Mine. The only claims that Swickard did not own were two small fractions of 49.5 feet at either end of the vein that he first saw when he began his work for Dunn. These fractions were claimed by Fred Colton and Gus Moore in 1897. In order to obtain sole ownership of the entire outcropping of the vein, Swickard traded the soon-to-be Duplex mining claim to Colton and Moore in exchange for the fractional claims he wanted.²

It seems clear that prospecting in the Searchlight area was inspired not only by Hopkins’s investment interest but also the long-standing interest on the part of Dunn, Swickard, and others in the triangle area where Nevada, Arizona, and California met, near the Colorado River. By 1897 successful mineral exploration activities had already been undertaken in the Eldorado Canyon, Goodsprings, and Crescent areas.³

Swickard was proud of his Quartette, and the meticulous work he performed for Dunn was evident many years later. His location monuments were unique. A Searchlight Bulletin more than ten years after the association carries a description of the monuments, which resembled a pawnbroker’s sign consisting of two stones and a pebble.⁴ To locate a claim, a prospector would usually put in place a small post and attach a tobacco can to it with the claim notice inside. Because he was being paid $1 for each claim he located, Swickard moved forward in a rapid and wide-ranging fashion, claiming outcropping after outcropping.

Swickard decorated the Quartette property with large signs that carried this message: “Any sheepherding sons of bitches that I catch digging in these here claims I will work buttonholes in their pock-marked skins.”⁵ Since Swickard was always heavily armed, his threats were heeded.⁶

Even though Swickard was extremely protective of his claims, he shortly sold them to the trio of Benjamin Macready, a Mr. Hubbard, and C. C. Fisher for a team of mules, camping equipment, and $1,100. Though proud of his effort in locating the Quartette claim, he sold because he had no faith in the property; he believed the outcroppings were a blowout of the vein and would have no depth. By today’s standards the consideration he received for his claim seems paltry, but by the standards of 1898 and 1899 the payoff was significant. It had been known since 1896 that low-grade ore existed in the area that became Searchlight, yet no exploration of more than a hundred feet in depth had taken place, not even by 1899, when Macready sold the Quartette to Hopkins. There is some evidence that Macready obtained the interests of Hubbard and Fisher and then combined his holdings with Dunn’s before selling to Hopkins and Associates.⁷ The selling price this time was $150. Before Hopkins could accept the deal, the price was raised to $200. Highly insulted, Hopkins felt he should not consider the new price. His mining engineer, Leo Wilson, intervened and for an additional $50 Hopkins increased his fortune.⁸

Dunn and Macready were forced to sell the Quartette property because they ...