Monday, June 15, 2015

Guest Author Sawyer Belle: The Nevada Silver Strike

My guest today is author Sawyer Belle who says her romances were influenced by her parents’ love and her heroes by her husband. She writes to entertain her readers and has been writing since she was young. Today she is sharing with us the fascinating story of the Nevada silver strike in the 19th century, research she did for her book Silver Nights with You.

Do leave a comment with your email as Sawyer is giving away a free copy of her story!

The Nevada Silver Strike

The word “Nevada” conjures mostly glittering images of Las Vegas.  Reno and Yucca Mountain may also get an honorable mention. But what is rarely referenced is a little known mountain in the northwest part of the state that peaks at just under eight thousand feet, a meager height when compared to the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains nearby. It is a bland and uninteresting-looking mountain, brown and barren but for crusty mounds of sagebrush and creosote, and the odd cottonwood bursting at its base. It is unimposing, unassuming, and resting upon a designated National Historic Landmark. That mountain is Mt. Davidson, and what happened beneath it changed mining around the world, stirring up a wild reputation for the west in the process.

Virginia City
Everyone knows about the California Gold Rush, but what is less commonly known is that it was swiftly ended by the silver rush created by the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver deposit discovered in the United States and one of the largest in the world. So much silver rested there that it muddied the ground with a blue-gray sludge, clogging machinery and processing used by early gold prospectors in the area. They soon tired of the nuisance and began casting the sludge over the cliff sides by the wheelbarrow full until a California assayer announced that a small sampling of the “sludge” yielded more than three thousand dollars’ worth of silver. 


News spread by the next day and the great “Rush to Washoe” began. The discovery gave birth to Virginia City, the mother of all boomtowns.
  
In its heyday, the city rivaled San Francisco for society and size, and even helped finance the rising metropolis when its Bank of California agents worked to snatch up significant portions of mining rights and mills. Such fortune also ushered in statehood, political representation in Washington, and helped Abraham Lincoln fund the Civil War. An estimated five hundred million dollars was extracted in just two decades, and it drew residents and investors from all over. Names like Carnegie, Hearst, Mark Twain, and Rockefeller ring a bell? They all have a place in early Nevada history. 


Besides the unprecedented amount of wealth flowing from this western enclave, the Comstock Lode gained notoriety around the world for technological advancements in mining. The bowels of Mt. Davidson were full of silver, with miners burrowing more than 3500 feet underground to claim it all. That’s the length of twelve football fields below the surface of the earth and was the deepest of any mines in the world at that time. Of course, this gave way to conditions never encountered before in mining.

Pools and rivers of boiling hot water slithered beneath the mountain, feeding the numerous hot springs of the region. Sometimes, mine shafts would be flooded by the scalding water, taking lives. Gruesome newspaper headlines, such as “Seven Miners Drowned and Cooked…” were sadly commonplace.  The water’s presence catapulted the temperatures of the deep tunnels to life-threatening heights of 140-160 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Miners would work in fifteen-minute increments before being hoisted back to the surface to cooling stations, where each man was allotted three gallons of water and ninety-five pounds of ice per day.

In addition, the ore was extremely soft, soft enough to be shoveled out, and the soil did not support itself. Large amounts of clay used to reinforce tresses would swell when exposed to air, closing in the walls on the miners. 

Traditional mining tresses did not support the soft earthen ceilings, resulting in many devastating and deadly collapses. Poisonous gases would often flow through the tunnels, reaching deadly levels.
In his book, Comstock Mining and Miners, Virginia City miner, Eliot Lord, wrote, “[miners were]forced to breathe this suffocating vapor till they often staggered forth from the station half blinded and bent over by agonizing cramps.” Some men didn’t survive the fumes.

These and other dangers claimed the lives of at least 300 miners and maimed at least 600, prompting improvements in traditional mining processes and systems.

To combat the issue of cave-ins, German engineer, Philipp Deidesheimer, designed a support system that allowed miners to tunnel safely without fear of a cave in (pictured below).  Modeled after the scheme of a honeycomb, Deidesheimer created “square-set timbering,” a sort of wooden trellis of stacked wooden cubes which supported each other. This method, pioneered in Virginia City, was soon used around the world.

Square set timbering



 Other innovations include massive hydraulic pumping systems and stations to relieve water.  However, pumps quickly became inefficient at greater depths and bulkheads, drills, and lateral tunnel schemes were employed to reroute the water. 




The greatest of these tunnels was the Sutro Tunnel, named after its mastermind, Adolph Sutro. This massive tunnel traveled six miles underground to reroute water to a nearby town. Though its construction took too long and was never used, it was still an historic feat of engineering and ingenuity for the time. 
Sutro Tunnel
 
Pumping station



















With so much prosperity, the appeal of the city was infectious, and people poured in. The good and the bad. The town quickly grew a reputation for raucousness. Any western fable will likely have a true counterpart in Virginia City. Shootouts, lynchings, robberies, suicides, gambling, mad men and Madams…you name it and Virginia City had it; plenty of drama and plenty of hope and despair and everything that makes life raw and wild. Mark Twain once reflected on his days as a journalist for the city’s newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise:

“The seemingly tranquil ENTERPRISE office was a ghastly factory of slaughter, mutilation and general destruction in those days.”

The population plummeted to less than three thousand by the turn of the century and it hovers around two thousand now, but it is far from a ghost town. Several original buildings remain open for business. Original hotels are available to spend the night in. Relics, re-enactments and tall tales abound in any open saloon. 

The glory days live on through its residents who share this small, yet significant, slice of history with tourists from all over the world who have come to see a glimpse of the real birthplace of the Wild West. 







Thanks for joining us today, Sawyer, and sharing the amazing story of this time in America’s history.

And for readers, you will want to check out Sawyer's story set against the backdrop of the greatest silver boom in the history of America, Silver Nights With You, reviewed in my post below.


You can find Sawyer on her Website, Twitter and Facebook.

18 comments:

  1. "Drowned and Cooked" - yikes! Apparently the silver was worth it...

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    1. Thanks so much for stopping by, Caytea!

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    2. Those were my thoughts, too, when I read that headline, Caytea. Yikes, indeed! I think I'd get over "silver fever" real quick if I read that.

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  2. Anyone reading this will understand why I can't wait for Sawyer's next book. They are full of history as well as being entertaining!

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    1. Janet, romances filled with history are the ones I like, too! And the ones I write. Thanks for commenting.

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    2. Thank you so much for your compliments, Janet!

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  3. Hi Regan and Sawyer,
    What an informative post. I love learning about historical facts behind stories written by so many talented authors. This particular novel sounds pretty interesting. Sawyer, you're a new author for me... so I guess I'll be heading over to Amazon and look you up. :)

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    1. So glad you stopped by, Liette. Thanks!

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    2. Hi, Liette! Thanks for taking the time to read about my research. Don't hit the "buy" button on Silver Nights With You just yet...there is still a giveaway going this afternoon! I hope you enjoy what you find from me. Thanks again!

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  4. My first encounter with Sawyer Belle was her amazing book, "Love of a Lioness," and it took me away...far away...I read it while on vacation and I couldn't wait to get back to it when something else demanded my leaisure time ( like my family)! Silver Nights is my 2nd favorite, right behind "Love of a Lioness."

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    1. Thank you, Teke! So happy you've enjoyed my stories!

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    2. Thanks so much for commenting, Teke. I know that Sawyer appreciates your love of her stories!

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  5. For any who see the post after this, Sawyer has selected the winner... it's Liette Bougie. Congratulations, Liette!

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  6. Extremely interesting! Thank you!

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    1. Thanks, Genny, for stopping by and letting Sawyer know you liked the post on Nevada silver mining!

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  7. Very interesting. I would love to win a copy to read. Ilean Fulton ileanfulton@gmail.com

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