Goldfield Century: Prizefights, ghosts, and lots of gold

Here’s a quiz-show stumper for you: What did boxing’s first great promoter, Virgil Earp from the O.K. Corral, the richest man in Nevada, and the founder of UPS have in common?

They all got came from Goldfield.

Where?

It’s the topic of Goldfield Century, the eighth book in my Century Cities series, and it’s a bit different than the rest.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Goldfield, even though it was, for a brief period, the biggest city in Nevada. In fact, during its heyday around 1906, nearly one-third of the state’s population lived in Goldfield. It had everything you could want in an Old West town: dozens of saloons, dance halls, gunfights, feuds, gold strikes, and jumped claims. Teddy Roosevelt once sent in troops to keep order during a mining dispute.

Goldfield was at the center of Nevada’s last big mining boom, one that rivaled the Comstock and Virginia City. Tonopah, just to the north, struck it rich with silver. And more gold was found in the Bullfrog District to the south, where Rhyolite boomed to become the state’s fourth-largest city. It’s a ghost town now, but at one time, it hailed as the budding “Chicago of the West.” Its newspaper was edited by Earle Clemens, a nephew of Samuel (aka Mark Twain).

Goldfield was the scene of the first fight of the century, a lightweight championship bout between Joe Gans and Oscar “Battling” Nelson that lasted 42 rounds: longer than any other fight staged in the 20th century. It was also the scene of an early test for Jack Dempsey when he was still a middleweight. The future heavyweight champ was knocked down in the final round and had to settle for a draw.

An arch is all that remains of the Sideboard Saloon, burned in a 1923 fire. The Goldfield Hotel is in the background.

Ghost town?

Goldfield is a ghost town, but it’s not.

Ghosts are said to dwell in the Goldfield Hotel, once described as the finest lodging between Kansas City and San Francisco but vacant since the mid-1940s. Goldfield High School, an impressive three-story structure near the center of town, has ghosts of its own; it’s been vacant since 1953, but a restoration project is under way. If you take a tour of the place, it helps fund the restoration, so by all means do so.

Even though most of its buildings are deserted, Goldfield remains the seat of Esmeralda County (there are fewer than 1,000 people in the entire county), as it has been since way back in 1907.

But for all that, a few folks still live in Goldfield. Once home to more than 20,000, it survives with a population of something like 200 or 300 today. Most of the businesses are closed most of the time, and there’s nowhere to buy gas in town, so it’s best to fill up in Beatty to the south or Tonopah to the north.

Goldfield does have a radio station, a couple of saloons (dating to 1905 and 1934, respectively), a diner, a convenience store, and a souvenir shop or two. Don’t count on the visitors’ center being open, but the bathrooms there probably will be.

If you get out of your car to walk around, there’s a handy tour book that can show you where you’re going, but you’re likely to be the only one out and about on any given day.

The Santa Fe Saloon has been open since 1905. Columbia Mountain is in the background.

A lot to see

There’s not much to do, but there’s plenty to see. Grave markers at the old cemetery tell tales of how residents lived and died more than a century ago. One shoe store owner died of a heart attack as his store burned in a massive fire. Miners killed by falling rock and electrocution are buried there. So are gunshot victims. Then there are graves whose occupants’ names have been lost to time.

The fire station dates back to 1907, and the banking-and-mine office building to 1905.

There are abandoned gas stations and wood-frame houses that are falling down like a house of cards in suspended animation. Rusting antique cars seem to be everywhere. Someone even hauled in a pair of subway entrances and plopped them down in the middle of a vacant lot. But there’s no subway in Goldfield; never has been.

You can take a tour of the Florence Mine and mill, the second-most-productive in the region when it was churning out 9 million of dollars’ worth of gold... before inflation: That would be around $260 million today.

The author in front of the ruins of the John S. Cook Bank at Rhyolite.

Nearby

Drive south to Rhyolite, and you’ll see skeletons of old buildings slowly decaying in the desert sun and wind. An old bank building; a schoolhouse built too big when the boom was fading; the stone façade of an old mercantile; a house made of bottles; an abandoned depot... It’s well worth the trip. You can even see some modern-art “ghost statues” by the side of the road on the edge of town.

Stop at nearby Beatty and see some of the buildings that used to be in Rhyolite before they were moved there, and check out the burros that roam the city streets. But keep your windows rolled up, or they’ll stick their noses into your car looking for a handout.

Gold Point is another nearby ghost town a little off the beaten path, southwest of Goldfield. It started out as a silver town called Hornsilver, but when they found gold there in the 1920s, they changed the name.

To the north, you can visit Tonopah, whose silver rush predated Goldfield’s gold fever by just a couple of years. Legend has it that a prospector picked up a stone to throw at a wayward burro and found it contained silver. If you want to spend the night there, you can stay at the Mizpah Hotel, haunted by the ghost of a prostitute called the Lady in Red. Or just up the road, there’s the Clown Motel, dubbed America’s scariest motel.

Goldfield Century includes information on all these places, too. Packed with more than 150 contemporary and historical images, it chronicles their growth and demise, from boomtown to ghost town, and everything that happened in between... and afterward.

If you’re curious about life in a Nevada mining town in the waning days of the Old West, pick up a copy on Amazon.