Comstock Lode

Comstock Lode richest known U.S. silver deposit, W Nevada, on Mt. Davidson in the Virginia Range. It is said to have been discovered in 1857 by Ethan Allen Grosh and Hosea Ballou Grosh, sons of a Pennsylvania minister and veterans of the California gold fields who died under tragic circumstances before their claims were recorded. Henry T. P. Comstock, known as Old Pancake, was a sheepherder and prospector who took possession of the brothers' cabin and tried to find their old sites. He and others searching for gold laid claim to sections of the Comstock (1859) but soon sold them for insignificant sums. The lode did not become really profitable until its bluish sand was assayed as silver. News of the discovery then spread rapidly, attracting promoters and traders as well as miners, and the lode was the scene of feverish activity. Among early arrivals was William Morris Stewart, who later became one of Nevada's first senators. Camps and trading posts in the area became important supply centers, and Virginia City, a mining camp on the mountain, was for several decades the "capital" of the lode and a center of fabulous luxury. Great fortunes were made by the "silver kings," John W. Mackay, James Graham Fair, James C. Flood, and William S. O'Brien, and by Adolph Sutro, George Hearst, and Eilley Orrum Bowers. Silver determined the economy and development of Nevada until exhaustion of the mines by wasteful methods of mining and the demonetization of silver started a decline in the 1870s. By 1898 the Comstock was virtually abandoned.

Bibliography: See G. Smith, History of the Comstock Lode (1943); G. Lyman, The Saga of the Comstock Lode (1934, repr. 1971); L. Beebe and C. Clegg, Legends of the Comstock Lode (4th ed. 1956).

Comstock Lode, silver deposit discovered by H.T.P. Comstock on the site of Virginia City, Nev. (1856). By 1863 the settlement had mushroomed to 40,000 inhabitants, and the mines were producing $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 annually. Large quantities of ore were milled throughout the 1870s. Clemens was present (1861–64) during its heyday and describes it in Roughing It. While in Nevada he first used his pseudonym Mark Twain (1863) and he also helped to edit the local newspaper, The Territorial Enterprise. Some 50 of his articles and dispatches were reprinted for the first time in Mark Twain of the Enterprise (1957) and his letters to the Enterprise in 1855–56 were collected in Mark Twain: San Francisco Correspondent (1957). Other authors of the region and the time included William Wright, known by his pen name Dan De Quille and for his History of the Big Bonanza, and Fred H. Hart.