Tonopah

Butler’s Claims at Tonopah Springs

Tonopah stands in the desert of southwestern Nevada, its commercial center laid along Main Street on U.S. 95, and it remains the seat of Nye County.^2,3 In May 1900 Jim and Belle Butler came prospecting from their hay ranch at Belmont and staked the claims that gave rise to Tonopah.¹ Butler was a rancher, part-time miner, and district attorney of Nye County, and onlinenevada says he may have learned of the rich, black outcroppings from members of the local Shoshone tribe.² Another account has Butler camped near Tonopah Springs in the spring of 1900 when his burro wandered off, and in chasing it he picked up a rock to throw and found promising ore.⁷

The state centennial marker says American Indians used the name Tonopah for a small spring in the nearby San Antonio Mountains long before Butler camped there.⁵ A 2009 marker renders the name as Little Water in Western Shoshone, while onlinenevada says it is generally accepted to come from a word meaning “greasewood water,” though several other interpretations exist.^2,6

Leasers, the Mining Company, and the Railroad

Butler and his partners first let verbal leases of 10,000 square feet each, and by 1901 over one hundred had been issued.² On July 1, 1901, by onlinenevada’s date, the partners sold the claims to a group of Philadelphia capitalists who formed the Tonopah Mining Company, though the mining park’s history gives June 1901.^2,8 By the end of 1901 Tonopah had thirty-two saloons, two dance halls, a newspaper, and two churches.² Ore went out by wagon to Sodaville, a railroad station sixty-three miles west, an arduous two-day trek behind long-line teams of horses and mules.^2,9 The Tonopah Mining Company built the Tonopah Railroad, a narrow-gauge line completed to Sodaville on July 23, 1904, then converted it to standard gauge in 1905 and extended it south to Goldfield as the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad.^2,10 In May 1905 the legislature moved the Nye County seat from Belmont to Tonopah, and the Tonopah Mining Company donated land for the courthouse.^3,5,11

Silver at Fifty-Two Cents and the Mizpah

The Writers’ Program guide to Nevada wrote that with silver averaging 52 cents by 1909, the ores of Tonopah were so rich that huge profits were possible even at the low price.¹² The state marker calls Tonopah the richest silver producer in the nation and gives it a population of approximately 10,000, while onlinenevada says the census recorded 3,900 at the end of the decade.^2,5 The Mizpah opened as a saloon in 1901, by its National Register nomination the first permanent structure in town.⁴ In 1907-08 Wingfield, Nixon, Bob Govan, and the Brougher brothers raised the five-story Mizpah Hotel, which opened in November 1908 with oak furnishings, hot and cold running water, and an electric elevator.^2,4,13 Key Pittman, who came in the rush of 1902, later as a U.S. Senator won the Pittman Act of 1918, which guaranteed silver producers a minimum price of one dollar per ounce.^2,12

Earthquake, Mine Fire, and the Air Base

Investment capital from the bay city dried up after the San Francisco earthquake and fire of April 1906, and an unforecast disaster forced the closure of two of Tonopah’s three banks.³ On Feb. 23, 1911, fire in the Tonopah-Belmont mine killed 17 miners, and 14 of its victims lie in the First Tonopah Cemetery beside the dead of the 1902 “Tonopah Plague.”^14,15 At its 1918 peak the district produced 622,364 tons of ore worth $9,311,560, but the Pittman Act expired in the 1920s and by 1930 the yield was only $162,841.² The U.S. Army completed the Tonopah Army Air Force Base just outside town in July 1942, and a monument with wreckage rubble recalls the Army Air Force personnel who died in B-24 training accidents at the Tonopah Bombing and Gunnery Range between 1942-45.^2,16 The base closed in 1948, and by 1952 the Tonopah Test Range and the Nevada Test Site had been established to the south.² In the boom of 1980-91 the Stealth project at the Test Range and a molybdenum mine swelled the town to about 6,500, and when the government pulled out and the mine closed almost together, it declined.¹⁶

Headframes on the Hill

The Tonopah Historic Mining Park opened in June 1999 as a 113-acre open-air museum on ground first claimed by Jim Butler.^8,14 The federal engineering record calls the Mizpah the most productive mine in Tonopah mining history, its shaft producing ore long after most others at Tonopah had ceased.¹⁷ The park foundation’s chair calls the Silver Top the only known mine complex that still has all its original elements: shaft and headframe, hoist house, trestle, grizzly, and the roadbed of the Tonopah & Goldfield.¹⁸ The National Register survey begun in July 1980 counted a community of nearly 1500, and onlinenevada gives 2,627 in 2000, with tourism and mining as key industries.^2,3 Lynn Otteson moved to Tonopah in 1958 to mine Royston turquoise, and the Ottesons, with 65 claims on 43 mines, have worked the mountains for three generations, down to his grandsons Tony and Trenton.¹⁹