Eilley Bowers, the Washoe Seeress: The Fortune in the Glass

In the boom years on the Comstock, stockbrokers rode up from San Francisco to Virginia City to ask a Scottish washerwoman whether they should go long or short. She consulted a piece of glass. She charged well for it, took in hundreds of dollars a day, and called herself the Washoe Seeress. Someone who finally got a close look at the glass reported that it was the stopper off a vinegar cruet, chipped along the bottom where it had hit a floor.

That is one true thing about Eilley Bowers. Here is another: she had once been the richest woman in Nevada, with a granite mansion in Washoe Valley, doorknobs cast from her own mine's silver, a necklace that cost sixty-five thousand dollars, and an afternoon in Queen Victoria's drawing room. And a third: she ended in the Washoe County poorhouse, and when the door closed behind her she said, "This is the end." The house still stands twenty minutes up the valley from our door. So does the glass. This is how a fortune became a legend, and what the legend left out.

Ten Feet of Gold Hill

She was born Alison Oram in Forfar, Scotland, in 1826, married a Mormon convert at fifteen, and sailed for America with the emigration of 1849. She never converted herself. The marriage came apart in Utah; a second one brought her over the mountains to a farm in Washoe Valley and came apart too. By the time the Comstock broke open in 1859 she was on her own in the raw camp of Gold Hill, taking in washing and keeping boarders, a thirty-three-year-old woman with a Scottish accent and a stone she had carried from Forfar that she said showed her things.

Among the men on the hill was Lemuel Sanford Bowers, called Sandy, a Missouri teamster who had come across the plains in 1856 and held a ten-foot strip of the Little Gold Hill ledge, bought for a hundred dollars. The story everyone tells is that Eilley got her own ten feet from a boarder who could not pay his bill. The truth is plainer and better: she bought and sold claims like everyone else, and she was good at it. The two strips lay side by side. She married Sandy in August 1859, the claims married too, and twenty feet of ground that could be worked with a pick and no capital at all turned out to be sitting on some of the richest near-surface silver on the lode. Within three years it had produced something close to a million dollars, half of it profit, and the Bowerses were the first people the Comstock made rich.

How the Nobility Put On Airs

They spent it the way people who have never had money spend it, which is to say magnificently and all at once. In the spring of 1862 they sailed from San Francisco for Europe and were gone the better part of a year. They came home with, in one contemporary's phrase, more than a peck of diamonds and jewels that Eilley seldom wore, one necklace alone said to have cost sixty-five thousand dollars, and the furnishings of an entire house: hand-carved furniture, statuary, paintings, cut-glass windows, hand-sewn drapes, china, and a library of something like a thousand leather-bound books, all of it shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco and hauled by freight wagon up into Washoe Valley.

The famous part of the trip is the Queen. The version that has hardened over a century says Victoria refused to receive a divorced woman and the Bowerses were turned away. The version told while Eilley was still alive is the opposite and much more fun: she wanted the drawing room so badly that she pestered the American Minister until, in self-defense, he appealed to the officers of the Court, and she got in. Sandy, for his part, said he did not care for it himself but wanted his wife and daughter to see how "the nobility put on airs," so they could give pointers to the wives of his neighbors in Nevada. He also wanted Eilley to take careful note of the furnishings Victoria favored, because he intended to build a house that would eclipse anything attempted in the royal palace. And then, as the same account put it, he did.

Bowers Mansion went up in 1863 on the Washoe Valley farm, designed with a former governor of California, built of granite quarried from the hill behind it by Scottish stonecutters, with sandstone trim shipped from San Francisco, sixteen rooms, four fireplaces of Carrara marble, and door hardware struck from Comstock bullion. The figure that gets quoted today runs to three or four hundred thousand dollars. The number put in print the week Sandy died was that house and furniture together had cost upwards of two hundred thousand, which was still a fortune when a miner earned four dollars a day.

A Residence in Crown Point Ravine

Here the record begins to say things the legend does not. Sandy Bowers did not spend much time in the house he built. Within a year of its completion his name was on a delinquent list for an unpaid stock assessment of $3,275, and for the last two or three years of his life he lived mostly across the valley in Gold Hill, in a house in Crown Point Ravine, attending to his mill and a mine there. He had been in poor health for months with what was called a lung complaint, and in the third week of April 1868 it turned into pneumonia. He died in Gold Hill at about one in the morning on April 21, at thirty-five. The Carson City paper learned he had been seriously ill the same morning it learned he was dead.

He lay in state at the Masonic hall in Gold Hill until one o'clock the next afternoon, and then the brethren of Silver Star Lodge, with a delegation from Carson Lodge No. 1, carried him over the hills to Washoe Valley and buried him on the slope behind the mansion. He had been the first man the Comstock made rich, and he had spent it.

Eilley was left with the house, a mountain of unpaid bills, and the couple's adopted daughter, Persia, who was a small girl when Sandy died and the only one of the Bowers children to survive infancy. Six years later, in July 1874, Persia was twelve and boarding with a family in Reno to attend school. She came home to Franktown for a weekend, went back to Reno on a Friday feeling unwell, grew suddenly worse on Sunday evening, and died on Tuesday night, July 14, after what was described as a short but severe illness and the intensest pain. It has usually been put down to appendicitis. Her mother never recovered from it, and nothing about the rest of Eilley's life suggests otherwise.

Going and Coming

What she had left was the glass. In the mid-1870s, with the Big Bonanza pouring out of the Consolidated Virginia and the whole Pacific Coast gambling on Comstock stocks, Eilley Bowers set up as a professional seeress, and the stock market made her famous. She predicted ore bodies. She predicted which mines would show up big and which would go to bedrock. The richest men and women of Virginia City were her regular patrons, and brokers came up from San Francisco to sit across a table from her and ask the only question that mattered on the Comstock: long or short. For a while she took in hundreds of dollars a day.

Then came the night of October 26, 1875, when fire took the heart of Virginia City, and within days people were saying that the Washoe Seeress had predicted the calamity almost to the day. The story has been repeated ever since. What she had actually said, as reported at the time by a paper with no reason to flatter her, was narrower and in its way more remarkable. She had told someone that something terrible was going to happen and that a grand crash in mining stocks would follow it, and she had tried to get a broker to short the market on the strength of her revelation. He could not see it, and declined. A week after the fire, with the stocks in ruins, the editor who reported this noted that her gift seemed to be limited entirely to mining affairs, since no one had ever heard of her trying her hand on earthquakes or grasshopper plagues, and concluded that she had happened to hit it both ways, going and coming.

Four years later, with the Comstock sliding toward its long decline, she was still at it. In an interview in the autumn of 1879 she declared that the height of the lode's prosperity had not been reached, that an immense body of ore lay between the 2,400- and 3,000-foot levels of the California mine, richer than anything yet found, and that it would all mill from top to bottom. Pressed on when it would be struck, she allowed that she was not good on dates, and that some of her predictions took longer to come true than she expected, but that they all came true in the end. She added one more thing worth remembering: she feared the deep workings were about to strike a great body of scalding water. On that point, at least, the Comstock proved her right.

In Front of the Courthouse Door

None of it saved the house. The mine had been sold in 1870. She had tried turning the mansion into a resort in 1873, adding a third floor and a mansard roof she could not pay for, and had tried to raffle the whole property when the resort failed. In April 1876 a court entered judgment for her creditors in the amount of $13,622.17, and on Wednesday, May 3, 1876, the Washoe County sheriff sold Bowers Mansion at public auction in front of the courthouse door in Reno. Myron C. Lake, the man Reno is named after, was the purchaser. The price was ten thousand dollars.

What happened to the furnishings is the part of the story that belongs to us, and it is a slow dismantling rather than a single loss. The rich furniture went first, because it was most easily moved. Then the solid silver doorknobs disappeared, and after them the silver hinges from the doors and the silver fastenings from the windows. The piano was sold for debt. By the turn of the century what stood in Washoe Valley was described as merely the shell of the original structure, a granite testimony to one man's ideas of magnificence with the magnificence stripped out of it.

Eilley went on reading fortunes. When the market slumped again her patrons were swept off the board and she woke one morning, as a Reno writer put it, to find her money and her friends gone. She got herself to San Francisco and kept telling fortunes for a bare living. Her last venture was a little lodging house, and it failed too. In March 1901 word came from San Francisco that the Washoe Seeress was destitute, and every Wells Fargo office in Nevada was opened to take contributions for her, however small. That summer, sick and old, she came back to Nevada because the graves of her husband and her daughter were on the cliff behind her former house and she wanted to be near them. She got as far as Reno, the nearest railroad station to the home she had once occupied. There were no friends to welcome her. The only door that opened was the poorhouse, and there she went. "This is the end," she said.

It was nearly. Friends in California eventually sent for her and she spent her last two years in a charity home in Oakland, where she died on October 27, 1903, at seventy-seven. Her ashes came back to Washoe Valley and were buried on the slope behind the house, beside Sandy and Persia, which was the one thing she had asked for.

Five Hundred Families and Forty-Seven Orphans

The house had a second act, and it is the better one. In 1903 a man named Henry Riter bought the derelict mansion for a thousand dollars and ran it for forty years as a picnic resort, with excursion trains bringing crowds up from Reno and Carson to swim in the spring-fed pools and dance on the lawn. When California investors offered him twenty-five thousand dollars for it in the 1940s he turned them down, saying it belonged to Nevada and Nevada's children, and in 1946 he gave the Reno Women's Civic Club a three-month option on it for one dollar. The women raised the price in pennies and luncheons and a banner over Virginia Street. Forty-seven children at the Carson City orphans' home sent twenty-three dollars and fifty cents. On May 6, 1946, the club handed a check for twenty thousand dollars to the Washoe County Commissioners, and Bowers Mansion became a county park.

Then came the furniture. Eilley's European furnishings were scattered across the West; so Nevada refurnished the house itself. Roughly five hundred Nevada families gave period pieces from their own parlors and bedrooms, and a handful of genuine Bowers pieces found their way home: the bedroom set, the drapes, some of Eilley's signed books. A restoration in 1967 took off the third floor she had never been able to pay for and returned the house to its 1863 profile. Sixteen rooms are open today, five of them with original Bowers furniture, and in the sitting room, in a case, is a small ball of glass that the house calls Eilley's crystal.

Visiting Bowers Mansion

Bowers Mansion Regional Park is on Old U.S. 395 in Washoe Valley, about twenty minutes north of Carson City and twenty-five south of Reno, with the Sierra at its back and the valley in front. The mansion is open for guided tours seasonally, generally late spring through early autumn; the grounds, the picnic lawns under the old cottonwoods, and the spring-fed swimming pool are open through the warm months. The walk up the slope behind the house to the three graves takes five minutes and is worth every one of them. Check the Washoe County Parks site for current hours and tour schedules, and if the curator's book on the family is for sale in the house, buy it; it is where the furnishings story lives.

At a Glance: Eilley Bowers and Bowers Mansion

• Born Alison Oram in Forfar, Scotland, 1826; came to America with the Mormon emigration of 1849; twice married and separated before reaching the Comstock.
• Married Sandy Bowers in August 1859 at Gold Hill. Their adjoining ten-foot claims on the Little Gold Hill ledge produced close to a million dollars in three years.
• Toured Europe 1862–63, buying the furnishings for Bowers Mansion; she was received at Queen Victoria's drawing room after pestering the American Minister into arranging it.
• Bowers Mansion was built in 1863 of granite quarried on site, with sixteen rooms, four Carrara marble fireplaces and door hardware struck from Comstock silver; house and furniture together cost upwards of $200,000.
• Sandy died of pneumonia in Gold Hill on April 21, 1868, aged 35, having lived mostly apart from the mansion for his last two or three years. Daughter Persia died at twelve in Reno on July 14, 1874.
• As the "Washoe Seeress" she advised Comstock speculators through the 1870s. In October 1875 she predicted "something terrible" followed by a stock crash and tried to get a broker to short the market days before the Great Fire.
• The sheriff sold the mansion at auction in Reno on May 3, 1876, to Myron C. Lake for $10,000. The furnishings, silver doorknobs, hinges and window fastenings were stripped over the following years.
• Destitute by 1901; a statewide Wells Fargo collection was taken up for her; she entered the Washoe County poorhouse that summer and died in Oakland on October 27, 1903. Her ashes lie behind the mansion beside Sandy and Persia.
• Saved as a county park in 1946 by the Reno Women's Civic Club; refurnished with donations from some 500 Nevada families; five rooms hold original Bowers pieces today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Eilley Bowers really predict the Great Fire of 1875?

Not in those words. What she said beforehand was that something terrible was coming and that a crash in mining stocks would follow, and she tried to persuade a broker to short the market on it. He refused. The fire came on October 26, 1875, the stocks collapsed, and within a week people were saying she had foretold the calamity almost to the day. The legend grew from there.

Was the crystal ball real?

It was real glass. She brought a Scottish "peep stone" from Forfar and later used a small glass ball; one person who examined it in her lifetime said it was the stopper from a vinegar cruet with a chip along the bottom. Whatever it was, Comstock brokers paid handsomely to have her look into it. A small glass ball identified as hers is displayed in the mansion's sitting room.

How much did Bowers Mansion cost?

The figures quoted today run from three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars. The contemporary figure, printed the week Sandy died in 1868, was that the house and its European furnishings together cost upwards of two hundred thousand dollars.

Was she turned away by Queen Victoria?

The story that the Queen refused to receive a divorced woman is a later embellishment. The account told while Eilley was alive says she badgered the American Minister until he arranged for her to attend a royal drawing room, and that she went.

What is left of the original furnishings?

Not much, and it is a miracle anything is. The furniture, silver hardware and piano were sold or carried off after the 1876 auction. A bedroom set, the drapes and some of her signed books were returned by later owners, and five rooms today contain original Bowers pieces. The rest of the house is furnished with period pieces donated by Nevada families in 1946.

Conclusion

The Comstock made a great many fortunes and most of them left the state. Eilley Bowers's is the one that stayed, because she sank it into granite and carved rosewood on a Washoe Valley hillside and then could not get it back out. She predicted ore bodies for brokers and lost her own house at a sheriff's sale. She foresaw a crash and could not get anyone to bet on it. She got into Buckingham Palace and ended in the county poorhouse. And then five hundred families she never met refurnished her parlor, and the children of the Carson orphanage, who knew something about losing everything, chipped in twenty-three dollars and fifty cents to keep the house from being sold out of Nevada. It is hard to think of a better monument to what a period room actually is.

We are always drawn to the places where Nevada's history is still out there to be touched. To bring a piece of the Comstock era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points. The newspaper accounts drawn on here are the Gold Hill Daily News of April 21, 1868, July 15, 1874, and September 23, 1879; the Eureka Daily Sentinel of October 31, 1875; the Territorial Enterprise of May 5, 1876; the Carson City Daily Appeal of March 20, 1901, and November 28, 1903; and the Reno Evening Gazette of August 7, 1901.

• Bowers Mansion Regional Park, Washoe County — hours, tour schedule and park information.
• Chronicling America, Library of Congress — free digitized Nevada newspapers, including the Carson City Appeal and Gold Hill Daily News.
• University of Nevada Press — publisher of Bowers Mansion: The Legacy of a Comstock Family by Tamera Buzick, the mansion's curator.
• Nevada Women's History Project — biographical research on Eilley Orrum Bowers.
• Online Nevada Encyclopedia — entries on the Bowers family, Gold Hill and the Comstock.

Hero photograph: Bowers Mansion, Washoe Valley, Nevada, in March 1940. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration; Library of Congress, public domain.