43 



tural and various concomitant iiitoro.sts dependent thereon, the importance of wliich will be 

 acknowledged and felt the more the mass of the people can see legitimate opportunities for lalior and 

 investment, which will accrue after wise and judicious legislation, that is sure to come from a more 

 careful study and mature deliberation upon the bearing that mineral productions have upon the 

 national wealth, and especially at a time when the country is burdened with a large national debt. 



TOWNS AND SETTLEMENTS. 



These are few in number, sparse in population, and mostly uninteresting in appearance. 



Away from the railroad, the only settlers, excepting now and then a ranch or station, have 

 come together in the vicinity of mining camps, which, being so uncertain in their nature, call for no 

 great permanence in the architecture of the miner's cabin, the mill, or the store. 



nA.>IILTON, 



by far the largest place in size, had something like two or three thousand inhabitants in July, 

 while in November 1,200 would have included them all. This was the principal point for the 

 mines in the White Pine District. Here the greater part of the business was done, and the 

 merchants and traders had collected, while the principal number of the mills at this period were 

 in the vicinity. Of course whisky-mills, with faro-banks adjoining, were plenty, while alternately 

 there appeared either a clothing or a grocery store. Such places become overrun with tiie surplus 

 population, of a rather questionable grade, of all the worn-out mining camps for a radius of hun- 

 dreds of miles. This place boasted a passably good stone court-house and a fine stone building in 

 which were the offices of Wells, Fargo & Co., and the Bank of California. One notices no such 

 thing as a church, 



TEEASURE CITY. 



Another settlement near the mines on Treasure Hill, consisting of one street, at an altitude of 

 9,000 feet, winding along the hills, was filled with miners and offices and residences of owners of 

 mining and mill property. In November, the greater share of the inhabitants had removed to either 

 Hamilton or Shermantown, to save fuel for the winter, so that less than five hundred remained, 

 while in July more than one thousand persons resided in this uninviting locality. 



SHERMANTOWN, 



the site of several mills engaged in reducing the White Pine ores, was a place of at least one 

 thousand five hundred souls upon our first visit. It is situated in a tortuous ravine, between the 

 White Pine range proper and Treasure Hill, quite secluded from the Pogonips of this section, and 

 near water, a thing not to bo found upon Treasure Hill. 



These three places, numbering between four and five thousand souls, had all sprung np with 

 the development of the White Pine mines, and npon their future depends also that of the places 

 named, which must build up or become abandoned according as the mines can or cannot support a 

 greater or less number of people. 



ELKO, 



at present a small station on the Central Pacific Railroad, grew first largely into importance 

 from the fact of its being selected as the point of departure for the White Pine mines late in the 

 fall of 1SC8. 



A thriving place ; grew rapidly into existence along the banks of the Humboldt, and in the 

 census of 1S70 has been found to number 3,447 inhabitants. 



The declining prospects of White Pine in the fall and winter of 1869-'70 soon devtdoped the 

 fact that Elko had exceeded the size necessary for a shipping-point ; therefore stagnation of busi- 

 ness in all its branches followed, in part alleviated by the discovery of Cope District, to the north- 

 ward and near the Idaho line, through which the stage-line to Silver City and points in Idaho, 

 which had heretofore left the railroad at Winnemucca, was transferred. 



The future of the place seems, now that it has been made a county-town, certain. 



