Past Times with Coins: A Search for Coins in Western Ghost Towns
“Windswept and lonely, the ghost towns of the west make no promises but offer exciting hunting for the romance-minded collector.”
I’ve long had a fascination with ghost towns. While working on my graduate degree, my professor, Dr. Watson Parker, an authority on the Black Hills and Deadwood, S.D., gave me his shelf copy of a book he co-authored, Black Hills Ghost Towns. Illustrated within are the remnants of the once-prosperous towns that littered the region.
The August 1965 issue of Coins featured an article titled “Where Sagebrush Hides the Secrets of Forgotten Coins,” subtitled, “Windswept and lonely, the ghost towns of the west make no promises but offer exciting hunting for the romance-minded collector.” The author of this piece, Jane Daily, focused not on the Black Hills but on the region around Nevada’s silver and gold-rich Comstock Lode.
“One of the most fascinating and exciting eras in our American history surely must have been that following the discovery of gold in the West,” Dailey wrote. “Those never-to-be-again days were filled with real-life drama. Cities sprang overnight from the sagebrush to sin and shine for a day and reverted again to sage. New kings were toasted with champagne and buried in sackcloth. The drama was filled with violence, laughter, hope, sorrow, excitement, joy, disappointment, and sometimes a mixture of all. When one king died on the vine, others always waited to be crowned.
“Since coin collectors are at heart treasurer hunters, searching through change each day in the hope of finding a bonanza, what more exciting and interesting vacation could they plan than a trip into history, a visit to some of the ghosts of the glory trail?
“There’s a rare chance you might pick up an old coin or coins carelessly dropped during those roaring, tumultuous, and oftentimes dangerous days of the bonanza kings. Or even a lost piece of expensive jewelry given to one of the ladies of the night by a lucky miner.
“Like the scarce dates on coins that are rapidly disappearing from circulation, these old mining towns of the west will eventually be erased from the American scene, leaving only the scars in the mountains and the multicolored dumps as mute evidence of the millions the mining kings dug from the earth. Even now, some of these towns that were easily accessible have been stripped of every brick and plank by vandals. Sagebrush had taken over to cover even the evidence of foundations.
“Our interest and curiosity were whetted when we visited the state historical museum in Nevada, located most appropriately in the old Carson City mint building. Here, we viewed much of Nevada’s early history. We bought a book listing more than 275 former boom camps. We found the prospects of visiting some of these places so intriguing we determined to spend our vacation wandering through the past. To make it more exciting, we purchased a metal detector to take with us. Who knows how many old pickle jars full of coins are buried in any number of former boom camps where no bank was available? Armed with a map, a detector, a pick, a shovel, and a rake, we set out on the most interesting vacation we ever took.
“A few inhabitants live in some of these places where water is available, working small mines, hopefully clinging to a dream of making a strike. Other towns have a few empty buildings where ghosts watch from vacant doors and windows. In the silence, as you roam around the empty town, your imagination can take you back to the days when it boomed with activity. When you walk through an old structure that once housed a saloon, listen in your mind to the loud and boisterous laughter echoing from times when money was made only to be spent over the gambling tables, on drinks, or with the ladies provided in the rooms above.
“[The town] Rawhide was spawned in the early 1900s. One fabulous fleshpot rushed to completion at the town’s birth, rang up $2,000 on its opening night, and soon yielded $25,000 a day on its gambling tables. The owner was Tex Rickard. The town eventually had 90 saloons that never closed and 500 chippies of every race and color working the line.
“Its glory was short-lived. In 1908 a windblown curtain in the back of a drugstore was ignited by a gasoline stove and the flames spread quickly. Having no water supply, this city of garish lights and pleasures was reduced to ashes. Though it was partly rebuilt, it soon gasped its last breath as the money panic hit the east, and its assets were too small to weather the storm. Besides a few wooden buildings, all that remains of permanence is the four-foot thick rock-walled jail house with its iron cell blocks.
“Our detector was of no use here since it was as vulnerable to the rusty nails covering acres of burned buildings as it was to coins. To our delight, however, we found a little change as we raked among the nails – a 1904S dime and an 1898 nickel. So we left Rawhide to look for greener (gold and silver) pastures.
“Before Unionville, a town of the 1860s, was in its swaddling clothes, one of its first adventurers was a newspaperman named Sam Clemens. He then was following the rumor of gold. He later achieved immortality as Mark Twain.
“Unionville sprang into its glory as the Comstock was booming. In a canyon with running water, it is now a retirement community of 19 Republicans and one Democrat. If you want to get anywhere searching through the ruins with a detector, lie if you must, but by all means, be a good Republican.
“Mazuma, or Lower Seven Troughs, was a lively gold mining town until it was wiped out in 1912 by a cloudburst roaring down from Seven Troughs mountain. Every home and business was wiped out, and eight people drowned. With time and patience, a metal detector could perhaps reward someone with something more than old stoves and bedsteads. There’s a vast area to be searched since the place was never rebuilt.
“Midas, originally Gold Circle since it was located in a large area of other gold discoveries, found its birth in 1907. Nine inhabitants still remain. A clear, cold creek furnishes plenty of water.
“We stopped to refresh ourselves at a small saloon run by an elderly couple who have a mine in the hills. We asked if they had any jars of coins they would swap us, and the lady of the house brought out three jars of pennies, assuring us she was no coin collector. Our joy was short-lived when we discovered a stack of Coins Magazines on a table in the back. When we looked through the pennies that night, we were not surprised to draw a blank on anything prior to 1940. Coins Magazine shouldn’t be sold to little old ladies. However, we did find some SD 1960 and a raft of S mint marks she had overlooked.
“Tuscarora is one of the gems among early mining towns, from the viewpoint of history. Here was Nevada’s ‘Little Shanghai,’ where 2,000 Chinese found sanctuary when no one else would tolerate them because they represented cheap labor. While the Bonanza kings took millions from the mines, they took out thousands more from the tailings and low-grade ore.
“The town shined and sinned in the 1860s. Every third Chinese had a gambling house, and thousands of dollars were wagered on one bet. They had their opium dens and a joss house, with a Buddha in an elaborate setting of gold, silver, and teakwood, where they worshipped. Nothing now remains of the Chinese settlement but two tumbledown shacks. Quite a few old buildings still remain in the town’s white settlement, including the windowless Masonic building, which now houses a tavern open only on Sunday.
‘About two dozen people still live here. An old timer, a Mr. Phillips whose father was born here, has an interesting rock and relic museum and will gladly give you whatever information you want about the history of the place. Here we found some Chinese coins over 200 years old according to the inscription on them, a few halves and other small change prior to 1860.
“Even though we didn’t find any buried pickle jars full of good coins, we found some interesting rocks and blue bottles in various places. We skipped hastily through several other ghost towns, excited as a child with its toys under the tree on Christmas morning. Our detector’s buzzing uncovered hundred-year-old tin cans, shovels, picks, spoons, forks, buckets, and other memorabilia.
“We look forward to other visits to the many ghost towns scattered throughout the western states. Maybe someday we will uncover something more than a hundred-year-old tin cans. We feel a kinship with the old prospectors who spent their lives searching for that big strike. The expectancy and anticipation that filled their lives with hope probably gave them more excitement and joy than spending a treasure if they ever found one.
“The ghost towns where no one lives and which in all probability are the best prospects for treasure hunters with detectors are too numerous to mention. They’re on rough roads, far from any facilities. To visit these places one must go prepared with water, good tires, a full gas tank and canned goods that will keep without ice in case of an emergency. And a good pair of walking shoes.”
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