NEVADA SILVER. 



"53 



paid in dividends. Extreme haste was necessary in extracting 

 the ore, so great was the danger of a disaster. Mackay and Fair 

 hardly rested day or night till the bonanza was exhausted. Out- 

 side, all the exchanges of the world were fighting over Corn- 

 stocks. The two mines, rated in 1871 at $40,000, were rated in 

 1875 at $160,000,000. Thirty mines on the lode were now valued 

 at about $400,000,000. So much money was withdrawn from 

 legitimate business and flung into the stock market that when 

 the inevitable crash came and the Bank of California failed, 

 every industry of the Pacific coast was checked for years. 



In the midst of the bonanza excitement Virginia City was 

 swept by a great fire, the culmination of a long series of mining 

 disasters, and in a few hours a territory half a mile square was a 

 mass of ruins. The mining companies lost acres of supplies and 

 lumber; Ophir, Consolidated Virginia, and California had all 

 their buildings burned; two thousand stores, hotels, lodging 

 houses, and dwellings were destroyed. The very next day men 

 were at work in the ruins, on the rugged hillsides, in the ravines, 

 by the monstrous waste dumps, clearing away, rebuilding on a 

 still more massive scale the giant machine shops, hoisting works, 

 and mills. The two bonanza 

 mines lost $1,500,000, and 

 yet they managed to keep 

 up regular dividends at the 

 rate of $1,080,000 a month ! 



All these years one in- 

 domitable mill owner and 

 engineer, Adolph Sutro,had 

 been fighting single-handed 

 the men who controlled the 

 Comstock. Away back in 

 1860 he had advised a deep 

 adit, and in 1865 he obtained 

 a franchise for the Sutro 

 Tunnel Company, with Sen- 

 ator Stewart as president. 

 The mining companies 

 bound themselves to pay 

 perpetual royalties after the 

 completion of the tunnel. 

 Congress, assuming the reg- 

 ulation of the immense 

 mining interests involved, 

 passed an act which, still further protecting the enterprise, made 

 the very titles of the mining companies dependent upon the ful- 

 fillment of their obligations. Large subscriptions were made, and 



Adolph Sutro. 



