Candelaria

by Wells Drury

To the east of the Mono Lake district lies a rough, mountainous area then embraced within the Esmeralda country. Already I have mentioned that I resided in this scenic region for a few happy autumn months in 1880, when I went up to aid John Dormer on his enterprising sheet, the True Fissure, in the hopeful camp of Candelaria, while he went off prospecting. This part of the Esmeralda country was officially called the Columbus mining district. Its principal camps were Candelaria, Belleville and Columbus. [Candelaria is now in Mineral County, Nevada, not in Esmeralda County.] It was organized by Mexicans in 1864, the preliminary meeting being held a hundred miles distant by men who recently had been in the district but who had vamoosed when the Indians went on the warpath. For that reason a special regulation was passed by the organizers of the district allowing the Recorder to live outside its boundaries until it was sufficiently populated to make it safe to remove there.

In the laws adopted by the miners it was decreed that the owners of claims should have the free use of all streams crossing their property, and also of all timber growing on their claims. These points go to show that the men who discovered these mines did not have much time to examine the country at their first visit, or else there has been a great change since that time. When I was there, the only timber to be seen was the dwarfed greasewood, which grows on ground that is too poor to sustain the more aristocratic sagebrush. As for water, there was none to be found in the district — except what was hauled there in barrels and tanks.

In Candelaria, the Mexicans at first held a virtual monopoly. By degrees, however, a few Americans, Slavonians and Germans managed to get their names on the notices of location, and the control of the district finally passed from the hands of the original claimants, together with the ownership of the property. The intrusive Anglo-Saxon even went so far as to rob the claims of their sonorous names, substituting his own ruder nomenclature. Such Nevada mine-names as Bully Boy, Big Bilk, Hoodoo, Accidental, Home Ticket, Buckeye and Bullwhacker scarcely compare favorably with the names of the Mexican claims around Candelaria — Guadalupe, Zaragosa, Sanco Pansa, Sacramento, Encarnacion, Refugio, San Lorenzo, Victoria, Pueblo, Sinaloa, Severiano, San Pedro, Juana Ordones, and the like. Bartosenagachi was a little harsher. The Esmeralda was one of the claims located; and the Candelaria mining-claim, from which the town no doubt received its name, was located on May 22nd, 1865, by S. Aruna, Jose Rodriguez, Antonio Rojer, Ventura Veltran and Francisco Pardo. It comprised 1200 feet with all the usual dips, spurs and angles, and in the original location is spelled Candelarea. It should be noted that this is the name of one of the holidays of the Catholic Church, which doubtless accounts for its having been applied.

Candelaria, the leading mining camp of the Esmeralda region during my generation, produced about $55,000,000 in bullion. The Northern Belle, the principal mine, had a better record than most mines in Nevada. To the end of 1880 it had paid 47 dividends and had never levied an assessment. Next in importance were the Mount Diablo mine, which however had not paid dividends; the Victor mine, long idle on account of litigation; the Mount Potosi, Enterprise and hundreds of other “locations.”

A likely camp, Candelaria still had its drawbacks. Water was scarce, being then transported by wagon eight miles from Columbus and costing about five cents a gallon. Baths were a luxury not excessively indulged in, nor was water as a beverage popular. It is a libel, though, to say that a Candelaria barkeeper threw a chunk of glass into the tumbler in place of ice. Another malicious report was that conditions were so primitive that, the camp lacking a dentist, sufferers resorted to blasting for tooth-extraction. Rugged mountaineers they were, though, for with hardihood they fought off ants, horseflies, rattlesnakes and tarantulas — “them hairy cusses,” as the miners termed them.

Some of the canards anent Candelaria were spread by its rival and neighbor, Bodie — it was only eighty miles away by stage. Candelarians derisively referred to Bodie as Bad-Shot Gulch, and this slur on its marksmanship was resented by the wild-and-woolly camp of the Sierras. The number of shooting-affrays in Candelaria and its mill-towns of Belleville and Columbus was appalling.

One of the killings was the shooting of County Commissioner P. S. Traver by Mike Owens early in 1880. Owens was captured by Deputy Sheriff Alex McLean, but his friends interfered and took him away from McLean. He was recaptured, but was acquitted on the first ballot. Dobe Willoughby, implicated in the same slaying, was finally freed by the district attorney because of insufficient evidence after ten months in the Aurora jail.

Doc Callison killed Joe Turner in McKissick’s Saloon, and was acquitted, as so many were, on grounds of self-defense. Said he, “ I could not have done otherwise.” In many of the newspaper accounts of such frays you would read, “both citizens of prominence.” Whisky was the cause of most of the fighting, but not when Bart Greeley mortally wounded Tom Logan in Candelaria in December, 1880. Tom was one of the most popular saloon-keepers in the place, but John Dormer wrote, “Neither man used liquor in any form. Logan was a quiet, peaceable gentleman, with a disposition as gentle as a woman’s. Greeley was not given to quarreling.” Still, they quarreled — as the aftermath of a card-game in which Greeley lost. Logan died saying he “blamed no one,” and all flags were at half-mast.

“Dog-fights are very numerous for a town of this size,” commented the editor of the True Fissure on a dull day, apparently with pride. John Condron’s dog “Boss” ruled the canine desperadoes in Candelaria and Pickhandle Gulch, much as one Blue Dick swaggered amongst the hombres.

Pickhandle Gulch, otherwise known as Metallic City, was a mile distant from Candelaria, in the canyon between the Mount Diablo mine and the Metallic and Equator shafts. The gulch echoed with the sound of revelry by night — all night.

There were quite a number of other active settlements in that same general region of Nevada, and some of them have endured till this day.

Yerington was known in the ’70s as Pizen Switch, until a Committee of Vengeance was organized by its citizenry to murder and scalp anyone who called it such. Stinking Wells was another station, on the Carson & Colorado narrow-gauge.

Hawthorne, overlooking Walker Lake, became the principal town of the Esmeralda region. It never had more than a few hundred people, but its ambitious projectors laid it out “on the plan of the city of Sacramento,” and divided it into 90 blocks. Whisky Flat lies south of Hawthorne, and a road leads thence through Marietta, on Teel’s Marsh, to Belleville.

This mill-town, which rejoiced in its reputation of “one of the best sporting camps in Nevada,” was almost as tough a place as Candelaria, 7 miles above, and J. S. Longabaugh, courageous peace-officer, had his hands full. Feuds were responsible for many of the killings, Tom McLaughlin, an old Comstocker, was there shot from his horse, from ambush, in 1880. He had killed two men and wounded another in a street-duel in Marietta, and this revenge shooting was attributed to the aggrieved Brophy gang. As to McLaughlin, the public prints recorded that “he was pleasant and genial in disposition, and the very embodiment of a gentleman when not in liquor.”

My gambler friend Ramon Montenegro had come over to Belleville from the Comstock as proprietor of “The Club House,” where parties could at dl hours “hold special or stated séances with the goddess of Fortune,” as Ramon phrased it in his florid manner. Quite a leader in the community, he even had a couple of short-lived newspapers, one of them named the Self-Cocker and the other the Tarantula, he told me. But a long-standing feud with Judge A. G. Turner flared up. The two men met on the street and turned loose with their pistols, shooting as fast as they could. In the fusillade Ramon Montenegro was hit twice and fell. Turner was taken to Candelaria for trial, but no complaint was entered and he was released.

Over to the east of Candelaria is the Tonopah country, but it was not till the first year of the present century that Jim Butler’s straying burros led to the Tonopah strike near the summit of the San Antonio Mountains. Two years later came the Goldfield discovery, to the south, and soon thereafter the Bullfrog and Manhattan developments — wonderful new treasure-finds that revived the excitement of the old days.

Just southeast of Candelaria on the other side of the ridge lies Columbus, which in the ’80s besides a quartz mill had extensive borax works. It was there that Borax Smith (Frank M., of Oakland) got his real start, in association with his brother, B. G. Smith, who was a leading merchant of the district, with general stores in Candelaria and Marietta. The brothers Smith, whom I knew well, first worked the borax deposits of Columbus Marsh and Fish Lake valley, but later devoted their attention to Teel’s Marsh' and still later F. M. Smith gained fame with his 20-mule teams in Death Valley. Lucky Baldwin also was often in Candelaria, looking into mining-properties. About that time he bought Yank’s place at Tallac, on Lake Tahoe.

Fish Lake, “a fashionable watering-place for the elite of Candelaria, Belleville and Columbus,” as Judge Richard Becker waggishly described it, is only a little sheet of water, fed by warm springs. The Judge, deep in Indian folk-lore, told me a tale as to why the tribesmen shunned its shores.

The legends of the Indians preserve the fact that in ages past this lake was the favorite resort of their ancestors. When the first white settler visited the lake its margin was dotted here and there by the picturesque wickiups of the natives, and in the evening the water was almost alive with these dusky children of the valley, enjoying aquatic sports.

It is different now. The red man no longer frequents the neighborhood. The lake and all its surroundings have been turned over to the paleface without a protest. The campoodie has disappeared from its banks, and its waters are no more disturbed by aboriginal bathing parties. A great fear has fallen upon this people, because of an accident which brought grief to their hearts.

At the end of the hunting season in 1873, a brave named Nak-Tah-Kotch sought the lake to enjoy with his family the peaceful rest which all his tribe were accustomed to take at that time of the year. The sun was still about an hour high, so runs the story, when the little party arrived at the lake. Nak-Tah-Kotch’s younger squaw released from her back the wicker basket in which all that long, hot day she had carried her papoose, and depositing it in a comfortable position against a sagebrush near the water’s edge, busied herself in preparing for her lord his frugal meal of dried venison, pine nuts and out-chu, the latter article being a species of wild potato. While thus engaged she was startled by an infantile cry, and turning, saw her child in the water.

The little wicker-basket, moved by a passing breeze, had rolled down the bank into the lake. With a mother’s instinct she sprang to the rescue, but in the frenzy of her maternal feeling became powerless, and sank almost instantly. Nak-Tah-Kotch plunged in to assist her, but with the desperation of a drowning person she clasped him around the neck, drawing him with her as she went down the third time. He was unable to release himself from her death-hold, and they both perished.

In the meantime, the basket, being of light materials and impervious to water, had floated to the middle of the lake with its human freight. The superstitious natives were all afraid to venture near the water, being convinced by the fearful catastrophe before them that the Great Spirit was angry with them for some sin that had been committed by them or their ancestors. It would have been sacrilege for them to have attempted to rescue the child.

Night came, and watches were set around the lake, all hoping to reclaim the little waif, but none daring to enter the water. Finally, the moon came up and the little wicker basket was discovered where it had drifted down among the tules which grew at the lower end of the lake. When reached, the babe was found to be asleep, blissfully ignorant of danger, while rocked by the gentle motion of the waves and soothed by their musical murmur as they broke among the sedges.

That child lived, a brown-cheeked maiden. Her name was Tah-Peta Yool-Kalla, which being interpreted means “Saved by-the-Moon.” Tah-Peta was greatly loved by the members of her tribe.

Each autumn Tah-Peta visited the lake and strewed wildflowers and branches of the wild artemisia upon the pyramid of boulders reared by her tribe to mark the spot where her father and mother last imprinted their footsteps before plunging into the lake. Having performed this filial duty she went back to her people in the mountains.

After the day of that double tragedy no Indian so much as put his hand or foot into the waters of Fish Lake. As the bodies were never recovered, the Indians think they were conveyed to the nether world by some evil demon. They believe the saving of the infant was the result of a direct interposition of the Good Spirit, and would have made a goddess of the girl if she so desired. She, however, had no such wish, but was content with no greater fame than that she was the fairest daughter of her tribe.

Southeast of Fish Lake lie Red Mountain and Silver Peak, and Lida Valley is still farther south. The adobe town of Silver Peak, where there was a big mill, was like a Mexican village.

Montezuma was a smelting camp of some importance. Other little places in the Esmeralda country, many of them abandoned now, were Dead Horse Well, Elbow, Gillis Mountain, Hog’s Back, Military Station, Baldy, Blind Springs.

Contributed 2023 Mar 01 by Norma Hass
Extracted from An Editor Of The Comstock Lodge by Wells Drury, published in 1936, Chapter 27, pages 238-247

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