Twenty-Five Dollars a Ton: Poeville on Peavine Mountain

Above: the Poeville Fire burning on the east face of Peavine Mountain above Reno, photographed on the afternoon of 27 June 2020 by Ken Lund (CC BY-SA 2.0). The fire was named for a mining camp that had been empty for a hundred and forty years.

In 1988 a fraternal order of Nevada historians bolted a bronze plaque to a post on North Virginia Street, a few miles out past where the city then ended, to mark the Peavine Mining District and the town of Poe City.

The plaque is gone.

Somebody photographed the empty site in 2022 — a post, a view, sagebrush. A marker put up to remember a town that left nothing behind has now left nothing behind either, which is either a very bad joke or the single most honest piece of historical interpretation in Washoe County.

Because here is the strange part. The name is doing fine.

There is a road named Poeville. There is a trail named Poeville. There is a mountain-bike trail named Golden Fleece after the mine, and there was a trail club called the Poedunks after the town's nickname. In the summer of 2020 a wildfire burned three thousand acres on the east face of Peavine Mountain and the newspapers, the evacuation orders and the federal incident reports all called it the Poeville Fire.

Four hundred people left their houses because of a fire named after a place where fifteen people were living in 1880 and nobody has lived since.

The Mountain Came First

Peavine Mountain is the big pale shoulder on the northwest side of the Truckee Meadows, and its summit — Peavine Peak, 8,269 feet — is the highest thing on Reno's skyline from most of town. Early prospectors found wild pea vines growing around the springs on the northeast flank and the name stuck to the whole mass of it.

People were on that mountain for thousands of years before anyone cared what was under it. Dozens of recorded sites across its slopes belong to the Washo and Northern Paiute, with material traced to the Martis and Kings Beach cultures. The springs that gave the mountain its name were the reason.

Prospectors started working the gravels on the northeast slope around 1856 — three years before the Comstock, before Nevada was a territory, let alone a state. That was placering: a shovel, a pan, a little water when there was any, and a few dollars of loose gold out of the gulches. It was never a business. It was a way to eat.

The business came later, and it came because of a man with an excellent instinct for publicity.

John Poe

He arrived around 1862 from Michigan. He was not a miner by trade. He was a promoter — a professional one, which in Nevada in 1862 was a recognised occupation with its own skills, and he was good at it.

He found veins carrying gold and silver on the east side of the mountain, organised the Poe Mining Company, and laid out a townsite. The district was organised in 1863 and for a while went by two names, Peavine and Reno, because nobody had settled which one would matter.

He let it be known that he was a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe. Nobody has ever proved it. Nobody then seems to have asked.

And he said the thing that every promoter in Nevada said in those years, which was that this would be the next Comstock Lode. The difference is that he had the showmanship to make it stick. He took his ore to the 1864 state fair and put it on a table where people could look at it.

It worked. The camp filled up. By the end of that year something like two hundred people were living on the side of Peavine Mountain at about 6,390 feet, which is a real elevation to spend a winter at, and the place had collected four names: Peavine to begin with, then Poe City in his honour, then Poeville because that is what people actually said, and then Poedunk and Podunk because somebody always has to.

Four names in two years, for a town that in the end existed for about fifteen. That is a lot of naming for not much town, and it tells you how certain everybody was that it was going to be big.

Twenty-Five Dollars a Ton

Nevada had a state mineralogist in those first years, and his first annual report settled the question in the driest possible way. He printed the assays from thirty-four mines in the Peavine district.

The average came out at one ounce, one pennyweight and three grains of gold, and four ounces, nine pennyweight and nineteen grains of silver, per ton of rock.

Which he valued at about twenty-five dollars a ton.

Twenty-five dollars a ton is not nothing. It is a wage. In a district with a railroad at the foot of the hill, water on tap and a smelter in the next county, twenty-five-dollar rock will keep a town alive for fifty years.

Peavine had none of those things. It had sulphide ore, which the milling technology of the 1860s could not handle on site at any price. It had almost no water, on a dry mountain, which is the one thing a stamp mill cannot do without. And it was forty miles over the Sierra crest from anything that could smelt what came out of it.

So in 1866 they loaded the ore onto wagons and hauled it to the smelters at Cisco, California — up and over the mountains, by animal, to get rock worth twenty-five dollars to a furnace.

Then the Central Pacific came through, and something happened that nobody puts on a plaque.

The first shipment of ore ever sent out of Nevada by rail was Peavine ore, going to Sacramento.

Think about where that sits in the state's story. Nevada in 1868 was already the richest mining ground in the hemisphere. The Comstock was in full roar twenty miles south. And the first ore the railroad carried out of the state came from the one district that could not make the arithmetic work — because it was the district that needed the railroad most, and happened to be sitting right next to it.

It still did not save them. The rock had more copper in it than gold, and copper in the 1870s was a commodity with a bad habit of collapsing just when you had committed to it.

The Map of 1867

There is a map from 1867 called simply Map of the Peavine Copper Mines, Washoe County, Nevada, drawn by a man named Andrew J. Hatch and published in San Francisco. It is a beautiful object and a very useful one, because it shows you what everybody expected to happen.

On it you will find the Antelope Mountains, Coyote Ridge, the Granite Hills, Cold Spring Valley, Lemmons Valley, Swan Lake, White Lake, the Truckee Ditch, Antelope Creek. You will find the Honey Lake & Virginia stage road and the Kansas Pass road crossing the country. You will find the Central Pacific Railroad along the bottom, and — this is the detail that gives the whole thing away — a proposed branch railroad to Truckee.

And you will find mines named with absolute confidence: the Morning Star, the Keystone, the San Antonio, the Sunrise, the Occidental, a grist mill, and a broad area simply marked Placer Gold Mines.

Scattered across it are the towns, each with a name and a dot: Peavine. Auburn. Crystal Park. Painters, Dunbar, Hall, Barker, Partridge, Madden, Kipman, Orr, Hunter, Oneil, Andersons.

Almost none of that exists. Auburn was a company mill town that Reno swallowed. Crystal Park became Crystal Peak and then a quarry and then nothing. The branch railroad to Truckee was never built. Most of the dots were a surname and a cabin.

That is what a boom map is: a picture of a place drawn at the moment when everyone involved still believed the money was coming.

Three Hotels

The town's real years were the 1870s, which is later than the discovery story suggests and worth sitting with. Poe found his veins in 1862. The district was organised in 1863. The ore moved in 1866. But the town — the actual town, with buildings and a street and mail — peaked around 1873 and 1874.

At that point several hundred people lived there. There were three hotels, saloons in the usual proportion, and a ten-stamp mill pounding rock. The producing mines were the Poe, the Paymaster and the Golden Fleece.

And on 1 September 1874, Poeville got a post office.

A post office is the thing to watch in a Nevada camp, because it is the federal government agreeing in writing that a place exists. It means enough permanent residents, enough mail, enough expectation of continuity that Washington will put a name on a list.

Poeville's post office closed on 24 March 1878.

Three years and six months. That is the entire span during which the United States formally acknowledged the town.

Inside that window the money arrived, briefly, in the way money arrives at the end of a boom — from New York. The Golden Fleece Gold & Silver Mining Company incorporated on 2 February 1875 and held one patented claim. A geological report written up in 1879, after the town was already emptying out, described an eight-foot ore vein there, which is a genuinely substantial body of rock. It was described, measured, written down — and not worked, because by 1879 there was nobody left to work it and nothing to be gained by it.

Two more towns were tried on the same mountain in those years, both of them founded on paper by companies rather than by prospectors.

• Webster, laid out in 1873 — gone almost immediately.
• Brooklyn, 1875, on the south side of the mountain. The Brooklyn United Gold & Silver Mining Company of New York started a tunnel, had a townsite surveyed and platted, and spent real money on it: a boarding house, a blacksmith shop, stables. It was abandoned within two years. A few faint foundations are still out there under the edge of modern subdivision.

A New York company surveying a town in Nevada in 1875 is a company that has read the prospectus and not the assays.

Fifteen People

Mining slowed through the late 1870s and then stopped.

The census taker who walked up there in 1880 found fifteen residents.

Not fifteen families. Fifteen people, on a mountain where several hundred had been living six years earlier, in a town that had three hotels and its own mill and a federal post office and a founder who told everyone it would be the next Comstock.

There is no disaster in this story. No fire, no flood, no cave-in, no massacre, nothing that makes a good anniversary. The ore was simply worth twenty-five dollars a ton in a place where it cost more than that to get it to a furnace, and when copper prices fell and better ground opened elsewhere, everybody did the sum and left.

That is how most Nevada camps actually ended. Quietly, and on purpose.

The gravels kept a little life in them. Men worked the placers on and off into the twentieth century, whenever there was water and nothing better to do. The best year on record was 1957, when prospectors and snipers recovered twenty-one ounces out of the stream deposits on the northeast slope.

Twenty-one ounces. In a year. Ninety-odd years after the thirty-four mines and the state fair and the next Comstock.

At a Glance: Poeville

• Where: the east side of Peavine Mountain, northwest Reno, at about 6,390 feet — on a flat beside Peavine Road, at the point where the road switches back uphill to the left. Reached from North Virginia Street.
• Four names: Peavine, then Poe City, then Poeville, and Poedunk or Podunk to anyone being funny about it.
• 1856: placer gold worked in the gulches on the northeast slope — before the Comstock.
• 1862: John Poe, a professional promoter from Michigan, locates gold and silver veins, forms the Poe Mining Company and plats a townsite. He is said to have been a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe; it has never been established either way.
• 1863: the district is organised. 1864: Poe shows his ore at the state fair and about 200 people move in.
• ★ 1866: the state's assays of thirty-four mines in the district average 1 oz 1 dwt 3 gr gold and 4 oz 9 dwt 19 gr silver per ton — about $25 a ton. That figure is the whole history of the place in one line.
• 1866: ore hauled by wagon over the Sierra to the smelters at Cisco, California.
• ★★ The first ore ever shipped out of Nevada by rail came from the Peavine district, bound for Sacramento.
• 1873–74: the peak. Several hundred residents, three hotels, a ten-stamp mill. Producing mines: the Poe, the Paymaster, the Golden Fleece.
• Post office: 1 September 1874 to 24 March 1878 — three and a half years.
• 1875: the Golden Fleece Gold & Silver Mining Company incorporates, holding one patented claim. An 1879 report describes an eight-foot vein there, by which time the town is already going.
• Satellites: Webster (1873) and Brooklyn (1875, by a New York company, with boarding house, blacksmith shop and stables) — both abandoned within about two years. Faint foundations survive at Brooklyn.
• 1880: fifteen people left. The ore carried more copper than gold, and copper prices fell.
• Placers: worked sporadically into the twentieth century. Best recorded year 1957: 21 ounces.
• Nothing of the town is visible today. Much of the mountain is now national forest.
• ★ The 1988 historical marker for the district is itself missing.

What Is Up There Now

Nothing of the town is visible. That is not a figure of speech and it is not a preservationist's complaint — it is the literal condition. You can stand on the townsite and see sagebrush, a dirt road, a view down over the whole Truckee Meadows, and no indication whatsoever that three hotels once stood within a few hundred feet of you.

The site itself is easy enough to find if you know what to look for: the flat ground beside Peavine Road at the switchback, where the road turns uphill to the left. Six miles or so round trip from the bottom. What you are looking for is an absence in a specific place.

Small claims have been worked near the site on and off ever since the town died, so the ground is not untouched. But a century and a half of weather at six thousand feet, plus a mountain that burns regularly, plus wood that was worth carrying away, equals a clean slate.

Much of Peavine is now national forest, with the lower slopes taken up by Reno's northwest subdivisions — which is why off-road access from town has tightened steadily over the past fifteen years while the mountain itself has gotten busier.

And this is where the name comes back.

Peavine is now one of the better mountain-bike mountains in the interior West. There were about forty-eight miles of singletrack on it when the local stewardship group started working it in earnest, with a twelve-and-nine-tenths-mile expansion under construction and a combined system heading for seventy miles. There is a beginner trail planned out of Black Springs. There are trails already built called Hopper and Golden Fleece.

Golden Fleece. Named after a mine that incorporated in New York in 1875 and never paid anybody anything, on a mountain where the trail is now the valuable asset and the ore never was.

The club that built much of it was called the Poedunks — after the joke name for the town — before it became the Biggest Little Trail Stewardship. One of its recent funding rounds came from the estate of a local rider who died in 2023 and left the mountain two hundred thousand dollars.

In 1875 a New York corporation spent money to put a boarding house on Peavine Mountain and got two years out of it. In 2023 a man from Reno left money to put trails on the same mountain and they will outlast everything the mining companies built.

The Fire That Took the Name

On 26 June 2020 a fire started on the east face of Peavine Mountain. It was reported at about an acre and a half. It was initially put down to a vehicle fire, and then crews found a second point of origin, and the cause went back to being under investigation.

The next day the wind came up.

By the time it was contained on 6 July the Poeville Fire had burned 2,975 acres. Eleven structures were destroyed, including homes. Two civilians were injured. About four hundred people were ordered out of Horizon Hills, Raleigh Heights, a mobile home park west of Golden Valley and the ground north of Lemmon Drive, with the orders later pushed south along Hoge Road almost to Rancho San Rafael. Power was cut to an estimated 8,500 residents. Livestock went to the Livestock Events Center. Because it was 2020, evacuees at the senior centre had to wait in their cars.

And at one point on the second afternoon, two drones flew over the fire and grounded every aircraft on it for about an hour.

Smoke reached Spanish Springs, Hungry Valley, Storey, Lyon and Pershing counties, Carson City and the Carson Valley.

It was named for a mining camp that had been empty for a hundred and forty years. That is how fires get named — for the nearest road or drainage or landmark on the map, and the map still says Poeville because maps are the most conservative objects we make.

So the town that could never make twenty-five-dollar rock pay, that the federal government acknowledged for three and a half years, whose own commemorative plaque has gone missing, was the thing that lent its name to the largest event on that mountain in living memory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where exactly was Poeville?

On the east side of Peavine Mountain at about 6,390 feet, on the flat beside Peavine Road where the road switches back and climbs to the left. Peavine Road runs off North Virginia Street in northwest Reno. It is roughly a six-mile round trip on foot or by bike.

Is there anything left to see?

No. Nothing of the town is visible. Small mining claims have been worked near the site over the years, so there is disturbed ground, but no standing structure and no foundation anybody has identified as a building from the town. The nearest surviving trace of the whole episode is a few faint foundations at Brooklyn, on the south side of the mountain, now hemmed in by subdivision.

Was John Poe really related to Edgar Allan Poe?

He said so, or let it be understood, and it has been repeated ever since. It has never been established. He was a promoter from Michigan and the claim was good for business, which is a reason to be careful with it and not a reason to dismiss it.

Why did the town fail when the Comstock was twenty miles away?

The rock was worth about twenty-five dollars a ton and carried more copper than gold. The ore was sulphide, which 1860s mills could not treat on site. The mountain had almost no water, and a stamp mill runs on water. So the ore had to leave — by wagon over the Sierra to California at first — and the freight ate the margin. When copper prices fell there was no margin left at all.

Did the railroad really carry Peavine ore first?

Yes. The first ore shipment sent out of Nevada by rail, to Sacramento, came from the Peavine district. The district that could least afford its freight happened to sit closest to the new line.

What was the Golden Fleece?

One of the three producing mines, alongside the Poe and the Paymaster. A company incorporated in 1875 to work it and held a single patented claim; a report four years later described an eight-foot ore vein there. There is now a mountain-bike trail on Peavine named after it.

Why is there a wildfire named Poeville?

Fires are named for the nearest feature on the map, and the map still carries the name. The 2020 Poeville Fire burned 2,975 acres on the east face of Peavine, destroyed eleven structures and forced about four hundred people out of their homes.

Can you drive to the top of Peavine?

There is an access road up the north and east faces to the summit, built to serve the radio installations on the peak, and most vehicles with modest clearance can manage it when the weather allows. Conditions change; the mountain gets snow well into spring.

Conclusion

A promoter from Michigan found some rock, told everybody it was the next Comstock, and put it on a table at the state fair. Two hundred people believed him enough to spend a winter at six thousand feet. By the peak there were several hundred of them, three hotels and a ten-stamp mill, and the United States Post Office agreed in writing that the place existed for three years and six months.

Then the arithmetic caught up. Twenty-five dollars a ton, no water, no smelter, and more copper than gold in a decade when copper broke your heart. Fifteen people in 1880. Nothing visible now.

But listen to what is still being said out loud on that mountain. Poeville Road. Poeville Trail. The Poedunks. Golden Fleece. The Poeville Fire.

The mines are gone, the hotels are gone, the mill is gone, the post office is gone, and the plaque somebody put up in 1988 to remember all of it is gone too. What survived is the only thing that cost nothing to make and nothing to keep: the names.

That is not a sentimental observation. It is how the historical record actually works out here. Nevada is full of places where the physical evidence has been hauled off, burned, bulldozed or weathered to nothing, and the only thing holding the position is a word on a map — which then gets handed forward to a road, a trail, a fire, a bike club, a subdivision, and goes on being used by people who have no idea they are saying it.

Poeville left no buildings. It left a vocabulary. Four hundred people packed up and drove away from a fire named after a town that failed because ore was worth twenty-five dollars a ton in 1866.

That is a longer afterlife than the Golden Fleece ever paid out.

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

Resources & Further Reading

The assay figures and the first-rail-shipment detail come from the Nevada State Bureau of Mines bulletin on the mineral resources of Douglas, Ormsby and Washoe counties, which in turn quotes the state mineralogist's annual report for 1866 and a 1936 federal survey of Nevada placers. District dates, commodities and placer production are from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology inventory of the state's mining districts. The post office dates are federal records. The Brooklyn townsite detail rests on an 1875 survey plat and a contemporary notice in the Reno press. ⚠ Accounts differ on when the camp properly became a town — the discovery is firmly 1862 and the district 1863, but one line of sources puts the founding at 1864 and another at 1872; the post office, the mill and the population peak all sit in the 1870s, and this article follows that. ⚠ The relationship between John Poe and Edgar Allan Poe is unestablished.

• Mineral Resources of Douglas, Ormsby, and Washoe Counties — Nevada State Bureau of Mines, Bulletin 46. The source of the 1866 assay average and the first rail shipment out of Nevada.
• Peavine district and Peavine placer district entries — district dates, commodities, and the 1957 placer figure, with the full nineteenth-century bibliography.
• Map of the Peavine Copper Mines, Washoe County, Nevada — Andrew J. Hatch, 1867 — the boom map. Worth studying for the towns that never happened.
• Brooklyn townsite, Peavine Mountain — the New York company's town, with the 1875 plat and the newspaper notice behind it.
• Peavine Mining District marker (missing) — the 1988 plaque, its full text, and a 2022 photograph of the empty site.
• Peavine Peak: Geology, Plants, and Mining History — a four-page field guide to the mountain, free to download.
• Auburn: The Mill Town That Was Here Before Reno — one of the towns printed on the 1867 map, and the only one of them that ever had a payroll.
• Crystal Peak: The Town That Lost Its Railroad, Then Its State — drawn on the same map as Crystal Park, on the far side of the mountain.
• Wedekind City — the other Reno-area silver camp, found by a piano salesman in 1900 and dead within five years.