Treasure City, Nevada: Silver You Could Cut With a Knife

There is a mountain in eastern Nevada where, for about eighteen months, the silver lay so close to the surface and so nearly pure that a man could drive an iron gad four inches into solid metal, and where the people who came to get it lived in holes dug into the slope at nine thousand feet, melting snow for water because there was none, in cold that reached twenty-three degrees below zero. The mountain is Treasure Hill. The town on its summit was Treasure City, and almost nothing about it was reasonable.

It is the purest boom story Nevada ever produced: a strike so rich that the ore itself became the legend, a rush that put thousands of men on a freezing summit in a single winter, a collapse that was already visible nine months after the peak, and a long, quiet afterlife in which British investors in London kept pouring money into a hill that had, essentially, already given up everything it had. This is the story of the White Pine excitement, and of the town that sat directly on top of it.

The Blacksmith and the Secret

The White Pine Mining District was organized in October 1865, and for two years it was nothing much. The mines were on the west slope of White Pine Mountain, the ore was ordinary, and the men who worked it were the usual scatter of hopefuls in a territory full of them.

What changed it was a piece of rock carried into camp by a Shoshone or Paiute man the record calls Napias Jim — napias being the word for silver. He brought it to A. J. Leathers, a blacksmith and the district's deputy recorder, sometime around the Fourth of July 1867. Leathers put the specimen through the test of his own forge, quietly, at hours when no one was watching, and silver ran out of it. He did this over and over, always with the same result, and said nothing to anyone for more than two months. The contemporary account of it is wonderfully human: his comrades noticed only that he had become "strangely mysterious," while Napias Jim, who knew exactly what was happening, "was supremely happy."

In the middle of September 1867 Leathers finally broke and told Marchand, the superintendent of the Monte Cristo mill. The two of them located the claim under the name Hidden Treasure and named the mountain Treasure Hill. Twenty-five pounds of the rock, worked at Austin, returned a dollar and a half per pound — three thousand dollars to the ton. By November other men had ferreted it out and were locating every extension and spur they could stake. Four days into that work a furious snowstorm shut the mountain down, and the men built a log cabin out of the pines then still growing on the hill and waited.

One Sunday in January 1868, strolling along the southern end of the summit, a man named Eberhardt found an outcrop and let the others attach his name to it. He objected mildly at the time. He thought the ledge was of no account. It would prove to be the richest single body of silver ever found in eastern Nevada.

Silver You Could Cut With a Knife

The Eberhardt is why Treasure City exists, and the descriptions of it from men who went down into it strain belief until you realize they all say the same thing. A correspondent taken underground by the mine foreman in early 1869 reported that there was not a foot between the two walls where ore worth from a hundred to twenty thousand dollars a ton could not be knocked down with a pick, that the marks of the pick stood in solid silver along the sides of the chamber, and that an iron gad had been driven into the soft metal to a depth of four inches. A visitor the previous December put it more plainly still: he picked up pieces coated so heavily in horn silver that, as he said, you could cut it with a pocket knife.

This was chlorargyrite — horn silver — along with bromargyrite and native silver, sitting in oxidized pockets in brecciated Cambrian limestone near the surface. One excavation roughly seventy feet long and forty feet wide gave up something on the order of three million dollars. A single mass of silver chloride crystals weighing six tons came out of the hill. Bullion from the district ran as fine as 995 parts per thousand.

It was also, geologically, a trap. These were surface pockets, not true veins. The richness that made the rush possible was precisely the kind of deposit that does not continue at depth, and the men who sank shafts expecting a second Comstock were chasing something that was never there. Over the roughly twenty years of serious work, the White Pine district produced somewhere around twenty to twenty-two million dollars in silver, most of it taken out fast and early.

Nine Thousand Feet and Not a Drop of Water

By December 1868 Treasure City had one street about a mile long. On the uphill side the houses were dug straight into the bank; on the downhill side they stood on stilts. Men who could not manage even that tunneled into the mountainside and hung a blanket across the opening for a door. The town sat above nine thousand feet, fully exposed, and the winter of 1868–69 was merciless: twelve to fifteen below in late January, twenty-three below in February, which the local paper called the coldest ever experienced in eastern Nevada. Fifteen inches of snow had fallen the previous June.

There was no water on the hill. None. It was carted up at eight cents a gallon, or made by melting snow over fires and sold around the streets by the bucket — twenty-five cents small, thirty-seven and a half large. The snow water gave everyone intestinal trouble, and the advice of the day, offered without irony, was to drink whiskey instead. Not until October 1869 did the White Pine Water Company finish pumping water up from springs three miles away, raising it nearly eighteen hundred feet to a reservoir on the summit, at a cost of over four hundred thousand dollars. When the rates doubled the following year, people went back to melting snow.

Everything else was priced accordingly. Lumber ran two to four hundred dollars a thousand feet, flour seventeen dollars a hundredweight, hay two hundred a ton; a single apple cost a quarter. A miner made five dollars a day and a carpenter as much as ten. A ride up the hill from Hamilton cost two or three dollars, and freight seventeen dollars a ton. A main-street lot that sold for twelve hundred dollars in November 1868 brought forty-five hundred by February. Sixty lots were jumped in one night. The prevailing law of title, as one correspondent dryly observed, was personal occupation and a good revolver.

And still they came. By February 1869 more than twenty-two hundred claims had been recorded, four-fifths of them within a two-mile circle centered on the flat beside town, and sixty-nine California corporations had been floated on White Pine ground with a combined nominal capital of $88.6 million — a staggering sum of paper against a mountain that had barely been opened. In March a visitor wrote that on a fair day the streets were so crowded a man had to elbow his way through. Estimates of the population run from two or three thousand up to six or seven; the honest contemporary answer came from a correspondent who simply said the number was difficult to estimate. At its height the one street carried more than forty stores, a dozen saloons, two banks, a theater, Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges, a stock exchange, a Wells Fargo office in the most substantial stone building in eastern Nevada, and a Chinese quarter. In June 1869 the town counted eighty school-age children.

The Fastest Collapse in Nevada

The first issue of the White Pine News was printed at Treasure City on December 26, 1868, on a press hauled over from a dead camp at Belmont. It went from weekly to tri-weekly to daily inside four months, which is as good a measure of the boom as any number. By August 1869 it was tri-weekly again, by October weekly, and at the end of the year its editor loaded the press onto a wagon and moved it down the hill to Hamilton. That is the whole arc of Treasure City in the life of one newspaper.

The turn came astonishingly fast. In late September 1869 — barely six months after the spring peak — a correspondent reported that Treasure City and Shermantown had both fallen into decline, and that lots which had freely brought a thousand to five thousand dollars in March and April could not now be sold at any price. The population was concentrating downhill in Hamilton, which had the county seat, the stage terminus, and a climate that did not try to kill people.

What followed was a long unwinding. The Eberhardt was sold to an English company in June 1870, and London did what London did: the stock ran to four times its issue price, and British money stayed in the district for the better part of fifteen years, pursuing at depth a richness that had only ever existed near the surface. The great International mill burned in August 1872, a loss of nearly half a million dollars. A snowstorm in April 1872 dumped a foot of snow and left snowshoes the only way off the hill. By 1873 about three hundred people remained. In January 1875 a fire took ten buildings — mostly saloons and a boarding house, no stores, which tells you plainly what was left of the commercial district. By 1878 the place was nearly deserted, one family and a handful of miners' cabins. The Nevada Legislature formally disincorporated Treasure City in January 1879. The post office closed in December 1880, by which time the census found fourteen registered voters on a mountain that a decade earlier had held thousands.

There was a last gasp in the 1920s, when the Treasure Hill Deposits Mines Company pulled something over a million dollars out of the old ground before folding in the late twenties, and a small heap-leach attempt in the 1980s. Neither brought anyone back.

Visiting Treasure City Today

Treasure City sits on the summit of Treasure Hill in White Pine County, with Hamilton about two miles below it and the mill camp of Eberhardt beyond. The turn is off U.S. 50 near Illipah Reservoir, roughly thirty-seven miles west of Ely, onto the county road running south: about ten and a half miles to Hamilton, thirteen to Treasure City, fifteen and a half to Eberhardt. The road to Hamilton is manageable with care in a normal vehicle; the climb to the summit is rutted and genuinely wants four-wheel drive and high clearance. It is impassable in winter and after rain, there is no cell service, and the nearest water is at Illipah.

What is up there is stone, scattered across much of the hill and running better than a mile along the old main road — walls, foundations, part of the stone and brick bank building, shafts, tunnels and dumps. Much of it blends into the native rock until your eye adjusts. The open workings are not fenced and the ground is unstable in places, so stay well back from anything that looks like a hole. Hamilton below has the smelter ruins, the Wells Fargo building, a standing hotel facade and a cemetery. Everything on the hill is protected; leave it where it lies.

If you are building a route through Nevada's silver country, Treasure City pairs with our accounts of Wonder and Ellsworth, two camps that took the same gamble on a smaller scale.

At a Glance: Treasure City, Nevada

• Treasure City stood on the summit of Treasure Hill at roughly 9,100 to 9,200 feet in White Pine County, about two miles above Hamilton.
• Silver was shown to blacksmith A. J. Leathers by a Native man known as Napias Jim in 1867; Leathers and Marchand located the Hidden Treasure claim that September, with first ore assaying $3,000 per ton.
• The Eberhardt, found in January 1868, held horn silver so pure it could be cut with a knife; one excavation about 70 by 40 feet yielded roughly $3 million.
• The rush peaked in spring 1869. By February of that year 2,200 claims had been recorded and 69 companies floated on $88.6 million in nominal capital.
• There was no water on the hill; it was melted from snow and sold by the bucket until water was pumped up from springs three miles away in October 1869.
• The White Pine News was published at Treasure City from December 1868 until its press moved to Hamilton at the end of 1869.
• Decline was visible by September 1869. The town was disincorporated in January 1879 and its post office closed in December 1880.
• The White Pine district produced roughly $20–22 million in silver, most of it from shallow, pocket-like deposits that did not continue at depth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Treasure City, Nevada?

On the summit of Treasure Hill in White Pine County, reached by county road south from U.S. 50 near Illipah Reservoir, about thirty-seven miles west of Ely. Hamilton lies roughly two miles below it. The final climb requires high clearance and four-wheel drive.

Why was the Eberhardt ore so famous?

Because it was nearly pure silver chloride sitting close to the surface. Men who went underground described driving an iron tool inches into solid metal and cutting the coating off the rock with a pocket knife. A single mass of silver chloride crystals from the mine weighed six tons.

How long did the boom actually last?

About eighteen months. The rush built through the winter of 1868–69, peaked in the spring of 1869, and was already in visible decline by that September, when town lots became unsellable. The town was legally disincorporated ten years later.

How did people get water up there?

At first they did not. Water was carted up at eight cents a gallon or melted from snow and sold by the bucket, and it made people sick. A pipeline and pumping works finally lifted water nearly eighteen hundred feet from springs three miles off in October 1869, but the rates soon doubled and many went back to melting snow.

What can you see there now?

Stone ruins scattered over the hill and strung more than a mile along the old main road, including part of the bank building, plus foundations, shafts and mine dumps. Many walls read as native rock at first glance. The workings are unfenced and the ground is unstable in places.

Conclusion

Treasure City is the shape of a Nevada boom reduced to its essentials and run at double speed. A secret kept at a forge for two months, a mountain of silver lying almost on the surface, thousands of men in dugouts at nine thousand feet paying a quarter for a bucket of melted snow, eighty-eight million dollars of paper capital raised against ground nobody had yet proven, and then the whole thing draining downhill within a year of its peak while London kept buying. The hill gave up an enormous fortune and it gave it up almost immediately, and what it could not give was a second act.

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

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points:

• Chronicling America, Library of Congress — digitized issues of the White Pine News, published at Treasure City from 1868.
• California Digital Newspaper Collection — the 1868–1875 White Pine correspondence in the Sacramento and San Francisco dailies.
• Forgotten Nevada: Treasure City — detailed site histories of Treasure City, Hamilton, Shermantown and Eberhardt.
• Nevada State Historic Preservation Office — the Hamilton historical marker and state records for the district.
• Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology — mining district reports for White Pine County, and W. Turrentine Jackson's Treasure Hill, the standard history.

Hero photograph: ruin of the Wells Fargo bank building at the silver-mining ghost town of Treasure Hill, Pogonip Ridge beyond, White Pine County, Nevada. Photograph by QKC, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.