Leeland, Nevada

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Leeland
Ghost town
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Leeland
Location in Nevada
Coordinates: 36°35′10″N116°35′10″W / 36.58611°N 116.58611°W / 36.58611; -116.58611
Country United States
State Nevada
Counties Nye
Founded 1906
Elevation [1] 2,380 ft (730 m)
Population
 • Total 0
GNIS feature ID 856067

Leeland is a former railway hamlet in the Amargosa Valley in Nye County, Nevada. A year after its founding in 1906, a railway station was opened. Raw materials from the nearby Californian mining village Lee were brought to Leeland to be transported by train.

Amargosa Valley valley in Nye County, United States of America

The Amargosa Valley is the valley through which the Amargosa River flows south, in Nye County, southwestern Nevada and Inyo County in the state of California. The south end is alternately called the "Amargosa River Valley'" or the "Tecopa Valley." Its northernmost point is around Beatty, Nevada and southernmost is Tecopa, California, where the Amargosa River enters into the Amargosa Canyon.

Nye County, Nevada County in the United States

Nye County is a county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2010 census, the population was 43,946. Its county seat is Tonopah. At 18,159 square miles (47,030 km2), Nye is the largest county by area in the state and the third-largest county in the contiguous United States.

Lee is a former settlement in Inyo County, California.

Contents

History

Leeland was founded in 1906 at the 144-mile marker of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, that started its operations that same year. [2] On October 15 of the next year, a railway station was opened in Leeland and a regular train service for both passengers and cargo was created. [3] The station building itself, that had three rooms, was opened a week later, as well as an office of Wells Fargo. Both structures had dirt floors and lacked electricity and plumbing. [2] The railway station was the first station on the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad in Nevada across the border with California. [4] According to an interview with Deke Lowe, the foreman of the railway section – most of the times an Anglo-American – lived with his family in a house in Leeland. Lowe said that the foreman's auxiliaries, who were primarily of Mexican origin, lived with their families in one-room residences. Most of the auxiliaries did not speak English and left Leeland within a year after their arrival. [5] [6]

Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad

The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad was a former class II railroad that ran within the locale of eastern California and southwestern Nevada.

Wells Fargo American multinational banking and financial services company

Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with central offices throughout the United States. It is the world's fourth-largest bank by market capitalization and the third largest bank in the US by total assets. Wells Fargo is ranked #26 on the 2018 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest US corporations by total revenue. In July 2015, Wells Fargo became the world's largest bank by market capitalization, edging past ICBC, before slipping behind JPMorgan Chase in September 2016, in the wake of a scandal involving the creation of over 2 million fake bank accounts by Wells Fargo employees. Wells Fargo fell behind Bank of America to third by bank deposits in 2017 and behind Citigroup to fourth by total assets in 2018.

Anglo-Americans Wikipedia disambiguation page

Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language who comprise the majority of people who speak English as a first language. This usage originated in the discussion of the history of English-speaking people of the United States and the Spanish-speaking people residing in the western United States during the Mexican–American War.

Leeland's station was used for the transportation of raw materials that were brought in from the mining settlement Lee, that was situated about 5 miles (8 kilometres) west of Leeland in California. Lee boomed in 1906. A stage line between the two settlements was established by C.E. Johnson. [2] As Lee grew, Leeland grew with it: Leeland had six or seven inhabitants in 1909 and 25 by 1911. [2] [7] On November 23, 1911, a post office was established with George Railton as postmaster. [2] [8] Leeland had its heyday the next year and started to shrink afterwards, because Lee's economy collapsed. [2] Leeland's post office shut down on November 14, 1914. [2] [8] By then, the place was still a water stop of the railway, but it was gradually forgotten. Leeland's railway station continued to exist until April 1931, when the station and other facilities were burned down by Jack Behresin, who committed suicide afterwards. Eventually, the tracks of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad were removed in the early 1940s. Nothing of the railway hamlet remains. [2]

Water stop

A water stop or water station on a railroad is a place where steam trains stop to replenish water. The stopping of the train itself is also referred to as a "water stop". The term originates from the times of steam engines when large amounts of water were essential. Also known as wood and water stops or coal and water stops, since it was reasonable to replenish engines with fuel as well when adding water to the boiler.

Farming

The area in the Amargosa Valley around Leeland was suitable for agriculture, since enough ground water, that could be easily pumped to the surface by wells, was available. In Leeland itself, employees of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad grew vegetables and grains in their backyards on a small scale. The railway company wanted to increase its profit and reasoned that if homesteaders would settle in the Amargosa Valley they would transport their products by train. [5] Farms had already been established in some other nearby places, like Ash Meadows and the Pahrump Valley. [1] In 1914 and 1915, officials of the railway company visited the area to investigate the agricultural possibilities. [5] In order to attract homesteaders, the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad created a 10-acre demonstration farm and dairy, that showed the agricultural possibilities of the area. The farm, that was named the T&T Ranch, was situated 5.5 miles (9 kilometres) southeast of Leeland. [1]

A homestead is a dwelling, especially a farmhouse, and adjacent outbuildings, typically on a large agricultural holding such as a ranch or station.

Pahrump Valley

Pahrump Valley is a Mojave Desert valley west of Las Vegas and the Spring Mountains massif in southern Nye County, Nevada, and eastern San Bernardino County, California. Pahrump, Nevada, is in the valley's center and the Tecopa and Chicago Valleys are immediately to the west. The valley has routes to Death Valley and a route to Las Vegas.

Demonstration farm farm demonstrated techniques

A demonstration farm is a farm which is used primarily to demonstrate various agricultural techniques, with any economic gains being an added bonus. Demonstration farms are often owned and operated by educational institution or government ministries. It is also common to rent land from a local farmer. The leaser is allowed to perform their demonstrations, while the land owner can be paid for the land usage or may be given the resulting crops.

However, the T&T Ranch did not attract any homesteaders. Potential settlers were discouraged by the Homestead Act, that among other things required homesteaders to develop a surface water supply sufficient for the cultivation of their land. In 1919, the Pittman Underground Water Act was passed by Congress. It was sponsored by Nevada Senator Key Pittman, and pushed for by the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. The law aimed to boost the reclamation of specific areas in Nevada with dry land and allowed the Secretary of the Interior to issue permits, that allowed the receivers to drill wells. A receiver of a permit could obtain 160 acres of land if enough water to support at least a twenty-acre crop field was found and developed within two years. [1]

Homestead Acts one of several related United States laws

The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than 160 million acres of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River.

Pittman Underground Water Act An act that was approved by the US Congress in 1919

The Pittman Underground Water Act was an Act of Congress, that was approved on October 22, 1919 and was repealed on August 11, 1964. The public law gave the Secretary of the Interior the power to hand out permits to American citizens and associations to drill for and look for groundwater on public lands in Nevada. In addition, the law gave the Secretary the power to give patents to permittees who found enough groundwater to sustain a farm. The law was supposed to stimulate agriculture in Nevada by supporting the development of artesian waters, since it was thought that the absence of surface water undermined the growth of the agricultural sector in Nevada.

United States Congress Legislature of the United States

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the Federal Government of the United States. The legislature consists of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

After the bill was passed, five officials of Pacific Coast Borax Company, the company that owned the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, took advantage of it. Their five homesteads were situated around the T&T Ranch and they formed a contiguous block. In 1927, the five claims were patented and the document was signed by President Calvin Coolidge. The homesteaders founded the Leeland Water and Land Company, a holding company, afterwards. Not long thereafter, the owners handed the rights of the land over to the Pacific Coast Borax Company. The T&T Ranch operated until the 1940s, when it was vacated, because the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad stopped existing. The farms had not been very successful. Cruz Venstrom suggested in a 1939 report that the unsuccessfulness of agriculture in southern Nevada was due to the distance between the farmers and their markets. The farming business in the Amargosa Valley outside of Ash Meadows took off a decade after the railway was closed. [1] [5] The T&T Ranch remained abandoned until 1946, when Gordon and Billie Bettles acquired it. They ran the demonstration farm until 1964. [2]

Pacific Coast Borax Company

The Pacific Coast Borax Company (PCB) was a United States mining company founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis "Borax" Smith, the "Borax King".

A holding company is a company that owns other companies' outstanding stock. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies to form a corporate group. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow the ownership and control of a number of different companies.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 History of Water Development in the Amargosa Desert Area: A Literature Review (PDF). Vol. 1. February 2005. pp. 30, 34, 36, and 37. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Hall, Shawn (1981). Preserving the glory days : ghost towns and mining camps of Nye County, Nevada (Rev. ed.). Reno, Nev.: University of Nevada Press. pp. 253–254. ISBN   9780874173178.
  3. ↑ "Important Railroad Changes". The San Francisco Call. 17 October 1907. p. 9. Retrieved 14 March 2016– via Newspapers.com. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  4. ↑ "Freight Rates to Tonopah Reduced by Southern Roads". Reno Gazette-Journal. 13 September 1921. p. 6. Retrieved 14 March 2016– via Newspapers.com. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  5. 1 2 3 4 McCracken, Robert D. (1990). A History of AMARGOSA VALLEY, NEVADA (PDF). Tonopah: Nye County Press. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  6. ↑ McCracken, Robert D., ed. (1988). "An Interview with DEKE LOWE" (PDF). Tonopah. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  7. ↑ "Murder Case Is Now Going On at Goldfield". Reno Gazette-Journal. 12 November 1909. p. 5. Retrieved 13 March 2016– via Newspapers.com. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  8. 1 2 "Feature Detail Report for: Leeland Post Office". United States Geological Survey. Retrieved 12 March 2016.

Coordinates: 36°35′10″N116°35′10″W / 36.58611°N 116.58611°W / 36.58611; -116.58611

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