By the year 1873, the Comstock mines had been in and out of bonanza several times. After each slump, new mining ideas and devices came on, new prospectors came on the scene, and more silver was found. No one was getting rich, but everyone was persistent. The Comstock mines had produced scores of millionaires, and hundreds of suicides from borrasca, which is the opposite of bonanza, and means simply that the mines had played out. The ores remaining were so lean that they weren’t worth milling. Four of the persistent hangers on, were James Flood, James Fair, William S. O’Brien, and James Mackay. Fair and Mackay worked as local mine superintendents, while Flood and O’Brien had a saloon in San Francisco, which they sold after operating it but one year, and went to Virginia City. Mackay had a firm, but unproven belief that two apparently worthless mines, the Consolidated Virginia and California, had untapped silver reserves in them. Their stocks were pennies, the four joined hands, and began buying Con-Virginia and California stocks as they came on the market.
When control of the two seemingly worthless mines was obtained, Flair and Mackay sank an 1100 foot deep exploratory shaft in the Con-Virginia. Fair was below ground the day his workmen cut into an eighth inch vein of pure silver. Fair ordered his men to follow the seam. It disappeared, reappeared, disappeared, reappeared over and over again for several weeks, until one day amazingly, it opened into a vein seven feet wide. The four partners held their breath and counsel too, while continuing to buy up cheap stocks, whenever they appeared on the San Francisco stock market. At the bottom of the Con-Virginia, a new drift was cut, going in the same direction as the drift above, where the seven foot vein was discovered. After drifting a mere 300 feet, Fair and Mackay cut into a block of almost pure silver, fifty four feet wide, and of as yet undetermined height and depth. This was the “Big Bonanza.” Still it was kept a secret. The pulse of the mine shares in Virginia City kept on with their ups and downs. After a meeting, the four knew they were probably the richest men in the world, so they let the world know.
Dan DeQuille was the mining editor of the Territorial Enterprise, a local paper. Fair invited DeQuille to “Go down there in Con-Virginia and just tell them what you see.” DeQuille was a trusted and conservative mining expert, and had many years of Comstock reporting. He went down into the mine, did his own measurements and figuring, and was so frightened by the result, that he cut his estimate of the ore in sight by one half, and still came up with what appeared in the next morning’s Enterprise; that Con-Virginia alone, had $116,748,000 worth of the “finest chloride ore filled with streaks and bunches of the finest black sulphurettes.” The Con-Virginia was adjacent to the California, which surely continued the same vein, and might be even richer. It was said in the first six months of 1875, the output of the two mines, was averaging $1,500,000 monthly. The four men came to be known as the “Kings of the Comstock.” The stock of the mines went from $40 million to $160 million in a matter of days, and made Virginia City a front page story in newspapers around the world. Virginia City itself, started with crude tents and holes in Sun Mountain. It graduated to mud huts and board shanties, burning itself thrice to the ground. After the bonanza, brick became the modus of construction, and dozens of saloons, restaurants, and houses of ill repute were sprinkled all over “Old Virginny,” which was the whiskey Jim Finney was polluted with when he named the town a dozen years earlier. Law enforcement, street lights, courtrooms and hotels sprouted about, and the six storey brick International Hotel was built with the only elevator, or ‘rising room’ as it was known, between San Francisco and St. Louis. In the International was the Washoe Club, where the rich nabobs smoked their cigars and drank fine spirits imported from around the world. Unfortunately, the International burned to a smoldering ruin in 1914, and was never rebuilt, as most mines by then had entered into ‘borrasca.’
Jim Flood was born in Staten Island New York of Irish immigrant parents in 1826, and had but an eighth grade education. After apprenticing to a carriage maker, he sailed around the Horn to San Francisco and the Gold Rush. With a partner William O’Brian in 1857, they started a saloon, sold it and became stock brokers. With his wealth, Flood built a sumptuous mansion at 1000 California St, San Francisco, which still stands. It is now the home of the Pacific Union, a Republican club, known by Democrats as the “PU.” Democrats will cross the street rather than walk in front of it, even to this day. Flood died in 1889 at age 82.
Jim Fair was born in 1831 in County Tyrone, came to the US with his father in 1843, and grew up on a farm in Illinois. Fair invested his profits in railroads and real estate, was not well liked, and became known as “Slippery Jim.” Fair built the South Pacific Coast narrow gauge railroad, which ran down the coast to Santa Cruz. It was profitable, and he sold it to the Southern Pacific. Fair and Mackay owned the Nevada Bank of San Francisco, a rival to the Bank of California. When the Bank of California collapsed, the Nevada Bank became, during the bonanza time in Nevada at any rate, the largest bank in America. Fair was elected to the US Senate in 1881, was defeated in the 1886 election, went back to San Francisco, where he died in 1894 at age 83.
John Mackay was born in Dublin in 1831 to a working class family, who lived in a dirt floored hovel which they shared with a pig. In 1840, the family moved to the Five Points slum in lower Manhattan, with John hawking newspapers to obtain a meager existence. By 1851, he had saved his money and sailed by Clipper Ship around Cape Horn, landing in San Francisco. He worked for eight years in placer gold mines in Sierra County California, with little luck. In 1859, he went to Virginia City where he worked for $6 a day as an employee of a mine, and at night in his own claims. Mine claims were measured in ‘feet’ of frontage. Mackay saved, bought more feet, and in 1865 hit it rich when he bought into the “Kentuck,” and was suddenly worth $1.6 million. He had enough to retire on, but continued to invest in mines, and joined the partnership with Flood, O’Brien, and Fair. In 1884, with Gordon Bennett Jr. they formed the Commercial Cable Company and Postal Telegraph Company. His other ventures, included mines in Colorado, Idaho and Alaska, timberlands and ranches in California, part of Spreckels Sugar Company, and he was a director of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Mackay was generous to his employees, gave bountifully to various charities, and died in 1902. The Comstock produced well over $200 billion in silver at a dollar an ounce. Next week: What did this do to the US economy? – Don Stott – 1-888-786-8822