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 NEVADA
LEGENDS
Eldorado Canyon - Lawlessness on
the Colorado River |
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The
area surrounding Nelson and Eldorado Canyon
was first home to the ancient
Ancient Puebloan
Indians,
and later the Paiutes and Mojave tribes. Living peacefully for hundred
of years, the
Indians
were intruded upon in 1775, when the Spaniards arrived in the canyon in
their constant quest for gold. Founding a small settlement at the
mouth of the
Colorado River, they called it Eldorado. However, these
early Spaniards somehow missed the rich gold veins just beneath the canyon’s
flanks, finding silver instead. They soon found that the silver was
not in high enough quantities to justify their operations, and moved on.
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Nelson,
Nevada
area, April, 2005, David Alexander.
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 Seventy-five
years later, in the 1850s, a new breed of prospectors began sluicing the
many streams feeding into the
Colorado
River. For a few years, the miners were able to keep their gold find a
relative secret due to the remoteness of the area. However, this
all changed in 1858 when the first steamboats began to make their way up
the Colorado
River from Yuma,
Arizona. Before long, word
spread and miners began to flood the area.
By 1861 miners had discovered the Salvage
Vein about five miles up from the
Colorado
River. The rich, vertically stacked ribbon of gold ran through a
steep ridge along one side of the canyon. The miners began at the
top of a high hill, cutting down into the vein. Before long,
several of the miners formed the Techatticup Mine, supposedly through a
series of shady dealings. The name derives from the Paiute
Indian
word for hungry, a term often heard by early settlers from the starving
Indians inhabiting the dry hills. The Techatticup Mine was
once owned by Senator George Hearst of
California, father of William
Randolph Hearst of publishing fame.
Before long the Nelson
District was dotted with several mines, including the Gettysburg,
Duncan, Solar, Rand, Wall Street, Swabe and Golden Empire Mines in what
was to become one of the earliest and richest mining districts in
Nevada. The Techatticup Mine, along with the Gettysburg, were the first mines in
Nevada
to be worked by white men.
Many of prospectors who find their way to
the gold field were reportedly Civil War deserters and disagreements and gunfights over gold and women became commonplace. Greed, claim jumping and vigilante justice fueled the fire. Meanwhile, the Techatticup Mine itself was in the midst of feuds over
ownership, management and labor disputes, which soon earned it a
notorious reputation. At one point the killings in the rowdy
canyon, called home to as many as 500 miners, became an almost daily
event where even lawmen refused to enter.
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Despite the sinister reputation of the mine,
the Techatticup was to become the most successful in the area, mining
millions of dollars in gold, silver, copper and lead throughout the years. For the next 70 years, miners at the Techatticup Mine dug deeper and deeper
into the hard rock, working with picks and shovels in chambers lit by
candles. As the gold played out in one tunnel, they would carve a new
one just beneath it using blasting powder, and then drag out the broken
rocks to be pulverized and treated with cyanide to separate out the gold. Over the years, the miners excavated tiers of a dozen tunnels, the lowest of
which could be reached by a long tunnel cut into the hillside some 500 feet
below the upper entrance. The temperature remained constant in the tunnels
at around 70 degrees and it is said that some of the miners slept inside
their workplace to escape the desert heat.
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The
Techatticup
Mine today, April, 2005,
David Alexander.
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The Techatticup Mine, along with dozens of
others engendered a number of settlements including Nelson and Eldorado at
the river’s edge. As the ore was extracted from the many area mines,
it was then transported to Nelson’s Landing along the
Colorado
River and shipped by steamboat to Yuma,
Arizona for
overland shipment to San Francisco,
California. The river also served as the primary source of much needed supplies for the
camps along the canyon.
In 1864, when the area was
still a part of
Arizona, the
territory’s first stamp mill was built near the steamboat landing. The
10-stamp, steam-driven mill, then processed the ore from the area mines
before shipping to Yuma.
The
lawlessness continued as factions of Northern and Southern sympathizers
developed among the miners during the Civil War. The strife and
bitterness split the workers into two camps, severely hindering mine and
mill production. Before long, Federal troops stationed downriver
had to be brought in by steamboat to break up the factions before more
bloodshed occurred. The lawlessness got worse after the area became
part of
Nevada,
when the nearest law officials were in Hiko,
Nevada
some 300 miles away. Finally, a military post was established in
Eldorado Canyon
in 1867 to protect the steamboat traffic and to keep an eye on the local
Indians
who were beginning to raid the canyon.
By
1883, a railhead was developed at
Needles,
California
and the long riverboat shipments to Yuma were rerouted to
Needles, where the ore was offloaded. Eventually, better overland routes eliminated the need for the steamboats.
Continued Next
Page
Also See:
Hell Dogs of
Eldorado Canyon - Ghostly Canine Apparitions
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Abandoned Mine in Nelson,
Nevada,
April, 2005, Kathy Weiser. |
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