Johntown, Nevada | |
|---|---|
  Johntown  Johntown | |
| Coordinates: 39°15′07″N119°37′25″W / 39.25194°N 119.62361°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Nevada |
| County | Lyon |
Johntown is a ghost town in Lyon County, Nevada United States. It was originally an important mining camp in Gold Canyon, midway between Dayton, Nevada and Silver City. In the late 1850s, Johntown was the largest mining camp in the western Utah Territory.
The Johntown camp was first established in the early 1850s when teamster, James Fenemore, set up a mining camp next to the Gold Canyon road. Two years earlier, emigrants journeying to California, had discovered gold at the entrance to Gold Canyon near Dayton. [1]
For the next 10 years, miners worked the area, "sluicing the placer deposits with primitive rockers and long toms, recovering limited amounts of gold." The canyon was populated just a few months out of the year, when water was available for sluicing. [2]
Johntown settlement was the site of the first newspaper published in Nevada. In the mid 1850s and handwritten on foolscap, a single copy of the Gold Canyon Switch, was passed from miner to miner to deliver the local news. Joe Webb edited the newspaper between 1854 and 1858. [1] [2]
From 1857 to 1859, Johntown was the largest mining camp in the western Utah Territory and its most important mining area. The Comstock silver rush began with this small camp in the winter of 1859, when miners traveled up Gold Canyon and became the earliest to mine gold at Gold Hill. In June of that year, Gold Hill was the site where the Comstock silver discoveries were made. By the early 1860, the Johntown mining camp was abandoned. [2] [3]
There are no original buildings to mark the site of the original settlement. The Johntown Nevada historical marker is located on the east side of Nevada State Route 341, south of Silver City. [3]
Dayton is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lyon County, Nevada, United States. The population was 15,153 at the 2020 census. Dayton is the second oldest Nevada settlement. It is home to the oldest hotel in Nevada.
A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Greece, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, California, the United States, and Canada while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.
Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 after the discovery of a profitable vein of gold; by 1879 it had established 2,000 structures with a population of roughly 8,000 people.
Virginia City is a census-designated place (CDP) that is the county seat of Storey County, Nevada, and the largest community in the county. The city is a part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The Carson River is a northwestern Nevada river that empties into the Carson Sink, an endorheic basin. The main stem of the river is 131 miles (211 km) long although the addition of the East Fork makes the total length 205 miles (330 km), traversing five counties: Alpine County in California and Douglas, Storey, Lyon, and Churchill Counties in Nevada, as well as the Consolidated Municipality of Carson City, Nevada. The river is named for Kit Carson, who guided John C. Frémont's expedition westward up the Carson Valley and across Carson Pass in winter, 1844. The river made the National Priorities List (NPL) on October 30, 1990 as the Carson River Mercury Superfund site (CRMS) due to investigations that showed trace amounts of mercury in the wildlife and watershed sediments.
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 American miner Henry Comstock.
The Colorado Silver Boom was a dramatic expansionist period of silver mining activity in the U.S. state of Colorado in the late 19th century. The boom started in 1879 with the discovery of silver at Leadville. Over 82 million dollars worth of silver was mined during the period, making it the second great mineral boom in the state, and coming 20 years after the earlier and shorter Colorado Gold Rush of 1859. The boom was largely the consequence of large-scale purchases of silver by the United States Government authorized by Congress in 1878. The boom endured throughout the 1880s, resulting in an intense increase in both the population and wealth of Colorado, especially in the mountains. It came to an end in 1893 in the wake of the collapse of silver prices caused by the repeal of Sherman Silver Purchase Act.
Silver City is a Census Designated Place and small residential community in Lyon County, Nevada, USA, near the Lyon/Carson border. The population as of the 2020 census was 155.
Granite is an unincorporated community with a U.S. Post Office in Chaffee County, Colorado, United States. The zip code of Granite is 81228. According to the 2010 census, the population is 116.
Alison "Eilley" Oram Bowers was a Scottish American woman who was, in her time, one of the richest women in the United States, and owner of the Bowers Mansion, one of the largest houses in the western United States. A farmer's daughter, Bowers married as a teenager, and her husband converted to Mormonism before the couple immigrated to the United States. After briefly living in Nauvoo, Illinois, she became an early Nevada pioneer, farmer and miner, and was made a millionaire by the Comstock Lode mining boom. Married and divorced two times, she married a third time and became a mother of three children but outlived them all.
The Similkameen Gold Rush, also known as the Blackfoot Gold Rush, was a minor gold rush in the Similkameen Country of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada, in 1860. The Similkameen Rush was one of a flurry of small rushes peripheral to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, which had drawn tens of thousands of prospectors to the new colony in 1858-1859, among the others being Rock Creek Gold Rush and Big Bend.
Silver mining in the United States began on a major scale with the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1858. The industry suffered greatly from the demonetization of silver in 1873 by the Coinage Act of 1873, known pejoratively as the "Crime of 73", but silver mining continues today.
Silver mining in Nevada, a state of the United States, began in 1858 with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver-mining district in the United States. Nevada calls itself the "Silver State." Nevada is the nation's second-largest producer of silver, after Alaska. In 2014 Nevada produced 10.93 million troy ounces of silver, of which 6.74 million ounces were as a byproduct of the mining of gold. The largest byproducers were the Hycroft Mine, the Phoenix Mine, the Midas Mine and Round Mountain.
The History of Nevada as a state began when it became the 36th state on October 31, 1864, after telegraphing the Constitution of Nevada to the Congress days before the November 8 presidential election. Statehood was rushed to help ensure three electoral votes for Abraham Lincoln's reelection and add to the Republican congressional majorities.
Orleans Flat was a historic mining town located on the San Juan Ridge about 20 miles northeast of Nevada City, California and about 5 miles northeast of North Bloomfield, California. The town was about 1 mile south of the Middle Yuba River at an elevation of about 4200 ft. To the west lay the mining towns of Moore's Flat and Woolsey's Flat, each about I mile apart. All three were settled around 1851 and their histories frequently intertwine. Collectively, they are sometimes referred to as "The Flats." All three were part of Eureka Township.
Alpha was a gold mining town in Nevada County, located about 2 miles southeast of the town of Washington, California and about 15 miles northeast of Nevada City, California. It lay at an elevation of 4120 feet, about 2 miles below the South Yuba River and just west of Scotchman Creek.
Eagle Valley is the area encompassing Carson City, Nevada. The valley was first settled during the California Gold Rush of 1849. The discovery of Nevada's Comstock Lode in 1859 established the economic importance of the area, which would become the site of the Nevada State Capitol.
Dun Glen is a ghost town in Pershing County, Nevada, United States, 9 miles northeast of Mill City. Established in 1862, the mining camp soon became one of the largest towns in northern Nevada. By 1880, mining had declined and the town was abandoned. With a silver discovery in the area in 1908, the settlement attracted people and was re-named Chafey. Chafey was abandoned when mining operations stopped in 1913.
Steamboats on the Colorado River operated from the river mouth at the Colorado River Delta on the Gulf of California in Mexico, up to the Virgin River on the Lower Colorado River Valley in the Southwestern United States from 1852 until 1909, when the construction of the Laguna Dam was completed. The shallow draft paddle steamers were found to be the most economical way to ship goods between the Pacific Ocean ports and settlements and mines along the lower river, putting in at landings in Sonora state, Baja California Territory, California state, Arizona Territory, New Mexico Territory, and Nevada state. They remained the primary means of transportation of freight until the advent of the more economical railroads began cutting away at their business from 1878 when the first line entered Arizona Territory.
Lucky Jim Camp sometimes called Lucky Camp is a ghost town site in Clark County, Nevada. It was within New Mexico Territory when founded in 1862.
Municipalities and communities of Lyon County, Nevada, United States | ||
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| Ghost towns | ||
| Indian reservation | ||