July 25, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before Silicon Valley and the oil booms, there was the Comstock Lode. Nevada’s legendary silver discovery created the Silver Kings: John Mackay, James Fair, William O'Brien, and James Flood, four men who rose from poverty to unimaginable wealth. Historian Roger McGrath shares how this once-remote mining camp became the epicenter of one of the most powerful fortunes in U.S. history.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites
in the Annals of American Capitalism. There is probably no crazier, wilder,
(00:31):
more chaotic boom to bust and back again phenomenon than
the Comstock Load in the eighteen sixties, the richest couple
of square miles on Earth, This small section of dirt
changed the destiny of the United States. Here to tell
this Rags to Rich's frontier tail is Old West historian
Roger McGrath. Here's Roger.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
If ever there.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Were real life figures who could have been characters in
Horatio alger novel, it was the Silver Kings, John Mackey,
James Fair, William O'Brien, and James flood ebitimized the Rags
to Riches American dream. John mackew is the engineering genius
of the Silver Kings. Born in Ireland in eighteen thirty one,
(01:15):
he immigrates with his family to New York in eighteen forty.
He reaches the California.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Goldfields in eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
He enjoys hard physical work.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
In mining camp life.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
He has almost no formal education and had stuttered badly
when young, but he is blessed with extraordinary intelligence. James
Fair is a mind superintendent without peer and a shrewd financier.
Born in Ireland in eighteen thirty one, immigrates with his
family to Illinois during the early eighteen forties. He has
(01:49):
enormous energy, a trenchant mind, and a natural aptitude for
all things mechanical. He joins the Gold Rush to California
in eighteen forty nine. William O'Brien is born in Ireland
in eighteen twenty six and brought to New York as
a small child. By the time he joins the Gold
Rush of forty nine, he has grown into a large
(02:11):
man of erect carriage. He will soon have a head
of prematurely white hair. His size, posture and hair give
him a dignified appearance, unlike his partners. Is soft spoken,
with an avuncular, kindly quality about him. He is the
least forceful of the Silver Kings, but his gregarious and
(02:31):
genial nature make him the most popular and ideal for
public relations.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
James Mutt is the only Silver King not to have
been born in Ireland.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
He's born in New York in eighteen twenty six, shortly
after his Irish immigrant parents arrive. He catches the gold
fever in eighteen forty nine and sails around the Horn
to California. He has a quick wit, a shrewd mind,
a volatile temper, and a powerful drive to succeed. Is
a genius in trading stocks and in finance. Macky, Fear, O'Brien,
(03:06):
and Flood all spend the early eighteen fifties prospecting and
mining in California, and each has some success with his
earnings from the diggings. O'Brien opens a marine supply store
in San Francisco. Flood, with money he has made opens
a livery and carriage shop just down the street from O'Brien.
(03:26):
Both lose their businesses though in the depression of eighteen
fifty five. They then join.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Forces and open a saloon.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
O'Brien reasons the only thing that does not go down
in a depression is the consumption of alcohol. He's right,
and their saloon thrives. Flood handles the business and it
operation while O'Brien greets customers and serves roast beef sandwiches
that come complimentary with a drink. By the early eighteen sixties,
(03:57):
Flood and O'Brien are dabbling in mining stock buying and
selling shares and minds the tap into the Greek comstock
load in Nevada, Flood is an uncanny ability in stock trading.
Within a few years, he and O'Brien amass a small fortune.
In eighteen sixty eight, they opened their own stock brokerage
office in San Francisco, Mack and Fair, working separately ALSOP
(04:22):
in the early eighteen fifties prospecting in California. Here's comstock
load historian Ronald James speaking to us at the location
of the Great comstock load Strike, which was made in
eighteen fifty nine by two irishmen, Peter O'Reilly and Patrick McLaughlin.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
The first miners who came here were after gold. Gold's easy.
Gold doesn't combine with many things, so you can actually
even pick it out of their washed dirt with tweezers,
and you hope for a nugget, but you find little
flakes of gold, and that's how you can pull the
gold out the two miners who were coming up here,
a couple of Irish immigrants. We're just looking for a
good place to dam up a natural spring so they
(05:05):
could get water. And they were hoping that they could
find some water, throw some dirt into their long toms,
which were these wooden boxes, and wash the dirt while
they were damming. A natural spring they found, which was
right up here. They started throwing some of the dirt
in there and found immediately that they were uncovering several
ounces of gold. And it was a very good day,
(05:27):
and it was the first of many good days, in fact,
twenty years worth of good days. They were complaining for
those first few weeks after the strike in June of
eighteen fifty nine, these early miners complained about this blue
mud that gummed up their works, because as you wash
away the lighter soil, it leaves gold behind. But it
was also leaving behind this blue mud that was really
(05:48):
obnoxiously heavy, and it was hard to separate it from
the gold. So after several weeks they took an ore
sample over to California and said, what exactly do we
have here. What they found was that if you had
a ton of this stuff, it would produce over eight
hundred dollars in gold when gold was selling for sixteen
(06:09):
dollars an ounce. But what was really surprising that it
was that it would produce over three thousand dollars in
silver when silver was selling for a dollar sixty an ounce.
And so that's really where everyone understood just how wealthy
this or body or using the cornish word load was.
And then it became known as the Comstock load.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
When they learn of the comstock loads strike at Virginia City,
they had over the seers to Nevada.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
The people who came to the comstock were an international
body of people. Nevada actually had in the eighteen seventy
census more foreign born per capita than any other state
in the nation, more than the great immigrant states. You
think of Massachusetts, Boston, and New York, and how vibrantly
(06:57):
international those places were. Chicago, a lot of Europeans, obviously
a large group of Chinese lived here. They came from
all over They often arrived as single men, and so
it was a very masculine community.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
And when we come back more on the lines of
these four risk takers, the silver Kings, the story of
the Comstock load continues here on our American Stories, Leehabib Here,
as we approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
I'd like to remind you that all the history stories
(07:35):
you hear on this show are brought to you by
the great folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn't just
a great school for your kids or grandkids to attend,
but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to find out about their terrific free online courses. Their
series on communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again,
go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their
(07:56):
free and terrific online courses. And we continue with our
American Stories in the story of John Mackie, James Fair,
James Flood, and William O'Brien the Silver Kings. Let's pick
(08:20):
up with Roger McGrath where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Mackie works as a pick and shovel miner for four
dollars a day, then is a timberman for six. Soon
he develops his own business excavating and fortifying tunnels. Much
of us pays in the form of stock certificates. Now
most of these prove worthless, but I few give him
enough money to buy the Kentuck, a mine whose ore
(08:45):
has supposedly been exhausted. Mackie sinks a new shaft in
the Kentuck and hits a rich deposit. During the next
several years, the mine pays over a million dollars in dividends,
huge money in the eighteen sixties. Mackie also has said
he will retire as soon as he has twenty five
(09:06):
thousand in the bank. Well, now he has many times that,
but his appetite has only been wedded for new adventures
and enterprises. Well, Mackie is working the Kentuck. James Fair
becomes superintendent of the Opher, one of the richest mines
on the Comstock. In eighteen sixty eight, he enters into
a partnership to develop new mining properties with Macki.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I'm standing at the base of the Opher pit. And
they called it over after o Fear the gold mine
of King Solomon in the Old Testament. By asserting that
this was the Ulfer mine. They were claiming that this
was a mine of biblical proportions. And they got it right,
because hundreds of millions of dollars came out of the
(09:51):
ground beginning right here.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Back in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Jim Flood and Bibel O'Brien take notice of these two
young up starts on the Comstock. Soon they are discussing
joining forces, and in eighteen sixty nine the San Francisco
Stockbrokers and the Comstock miners form a partnership. By the
early eighteen seventies, through wise investments in daring gambles, the
(10:18):
four Irishmen are challenging William Ralston of the Bank of
California for control of the Comstock. In eighteen seventy two,
they buy the Consolidated Virginia mine for one hundred thousand
dollars from Ralston's right hand man in Virginia City, William Sharon.
Sharon gleefully reports to Ralston the Irishmen have been taken.
(10:41):
The Consolidated Virginia, says Sharon, is a bankrupt piece of property.
Over a million dollars has already been wasted in the
mind and fruitless exploration.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Mac and Fair have a.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Hunch if they cut a new tunnel at a deeper level,
they will hit a vein of oar. Several months they tunnel,
pouring two hundred thousand into the Consolidated Virginia, but hoisting
up nothing but worthless rock.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
William Sharing roars with laughter.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Then one day Macki and Fair in a delicately thin
vein of ore. They try to follow it, but it disappears.
They find it again, but again it disappears. They find
it a third time. This time the vein begins to
widen to a foot, to several feet, to half dozen
feet to twelve feet. Maci and Fair send word to
(11:35):
Flood O'Brien in San Francisco. The stockbrokers quickly buy up
as much outstanding consolidated Virginia stock as they can. The
deeper the new shaft is sunk in the consolidated Virginia,
the wider the vein becomes. At the fifteen hundred foot level,
the vein is more than fifty feet wide. The ore
(11:57):
is so rich waste rock has to be ad do
it to put it through the stamp mill. The irishmen
have discovered the very heart of the comstock load what
is called the Big Bonanza. For the rest of their
lives they are known as the Silver Kings. Here again
(12:18):
is Ronald James.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
In eighteen seventy three, they found what was called the
Big Bonanza. Here the comstock load. The combination of gold
and silver started expanding as they went underground, and at
its widest up to sixty feet wide of nearly pure
gold and silver. The problem is you cannot find a
log stout enough to span sixty feet even twenty feet
(12:44):
without snapping, because it has to hold up a mountain,
and mountains want to collapse in on empty space. So
they brought in a German immigrant by the name of
Philip Diidesheimer who developed the square set timbering method, and
it was basically a series of cube that could be
in modular fashion added to so that whatever the stope,
(13:07):
the empty space left over when you dug out all
the gold and silver, whatever that stope was shaped like,
you could fill it up with a stout framework of timber,
and then you would fill it back with waste rock
as you dug even deeper inside the mine. So it
was a really nice stable way to support a mine
as you were pursuing precious metals, and that was exported
(13:29):
throughout the world. It's only the first of many inventions.
Flat wire cable, the safety cage. This was the first
place where dynamite was experimented with in a big way underground.
It was the first place where air compressed drills were used,
so it became one invention after the next that defined
(13:51):
international underground mining for the next fifty or sixty years.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Bighteen seventy five, the silver Kings are fabulously wealthy. The
Consolidated virgin is paying dividends of a million dollars a month,
something like one hundred million in today's money. San Francisco
is seized by a speculative mania. If the Consolidated Virginia
has hit the big bonanza, other minds might also. Thousands
(14:17):
of shares of mining stock trade daily. People make and
lose fortunes overnight. Char women buy the hotels they scrub
floors in hack drivers give away the carriages to live
on the bill. Chinese gambling dens clothes because Chinese are
gambling in mining stocks instead of fan ten. From eighteen
(14:37):
seventy three to eighteen eighty two, the Consolidated Virginia yields
sixty five million in gold and silver and pays forty
three million in dividends, more than four billion in today's dollars.
Here again is Ronald James.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
The deepest shaft here dropped over three thousand feet three thousand,
two hundred feet. It's overl mile a straight elevator drop.
And keep in mind this is in eighteen seventy eighteen eighty,
when most people have never ridden an elevator anywhere, And
to imagine these people being dropped down over half miles
(15:15):
straight down, it really is something. There was a law
on the Nevada books that said it's against the law
to talk to a hoist operator. He was a fellow
who was running the spool as it lowered the cages down,
and it's illegal to talk to a hoist operator while
he's working because if you distract him and he's off
by ten feet, that could be fatal to the guys
(15:36):
in the cage as they drop down.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
The Silver Kangs all live righteously well and die with
multimillion dollars. States William O'Brien contributes to charities and supports
all his close relatives, especially the MacDonnal and Coleman families
of San Francisco. James flood By San Francisco Real Estate,
erects numerous buildings, funds new business fans, and establishes the
(16:01):
Nevada Bank. The Nevada Bank later merges with Wells Fargo.
He donates large sums to charities. He and his wife
and their children live on the fabulous thirty five acre
estate at Menlo Park. James Fair is elected to the
US Senate from Nevada, but it spends most of his
time accumulating in real estate In San Francisco. He becomes
(16:26):
the city's largest taxpayer. He also establishes two banks and
a railroad. John Mackie forms a telegraph company, lays a
cable across the Atlantic, and breaks the Western Union monopoly.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
He makes more.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Millions during his lifetime. He gives away more than five
million in gifts. He also tears up IOU notes worth
more than two million, like for giving two hundred million
in today's money. When the Great Fire of October eighteen
seventy five destroys the central part of Virginia City, including
the town's Catholic church, Saint Mary's of the Mountains, Mackie
(17:04):
donates much of the money to have Saint Mary's rebuilt
bigger and better than ever. During a slow period on
the comstock, Mackie secretly pays a Virginia City grocer to
supply provisions to any minor at of work. He also
is the largest contributor to Sisters Hospital, requiring only that
(17:25):
his donations be kept confidential. John Mackie, James Fair, William O'Brien,
and James Flood demonstrate that horacial Algier characters were not
confined to novels, but were found for real in America.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And there you have it, the story of the Silver Kings.
This is Lee Habeeb, the Silver King's story. Here on
our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites
in the Annals of American Capitalism. There is probably no crazier, wilder,
(00:31):
more chaotic boom to bust and back again phenomenon than
the Comstock Load in the eighteen sixties, the richest couple
of square miles on Earth, This small section of dirt
changed the destiny of the United States. Here to tell
this Rags to Rich's frontier tail is Old West historian
Roger McGrath. Here's Roger.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
If ever there.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Were real life figures who could have been characters in
Horatio alger novel, it was the Silver Kings, John Mackey,
James Fair, William O'Brien, and James flood ebitimized the Rags
to Riches American dream. John mackew is the engineering genius
of the Silver Kings. Born in Ireland in eighteen thirty one,
(01:15):
he immigrates with his family to New York in eighteen forty.
He reaches the California.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Goldfields in eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
He enjoys hard physical work.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
In mining camp life.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
He has almost no formal education and had stuttered badly
when young, but he is blessed with extraordinary intelligence. James
Fair is a mind superintendent without peer and a shrewd financier.
Born in Ireland in eighteen thirty one, immigrates with his
family to Illinois during the early eighteen forties. He has
(01:49):
enormous energy, a trenchant mind, and a natural aptitude for
all things mechanical. He joins the Gold Rush to California
in eighteen forty nine. William O'Brien is born in Ireland
in eighteen twenty six and brought to New York as
a small child. By the time he joins the Gold
Rush of forty nine, he has grown into a large
(02:11):
man of erect carriage. He will soon have a head
of prematurely white hair. His size, posture and hair give
him a dignified appearance, unlike his partners. Is soft spoken,
with an avuncular, kindly quality about him. He is the
least forceful of the Silver Kings, but his gregarious and
(02:31):
genial nature make him the most popular and ideal for
public relations.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
James Mutt is the only Silver King not to have
been born in Ireland.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
He's born in New York in eighteen twenty six, shortly
after his Irish immigrant parents arrive. He catches the gold
fever in eighteen forty nine and sails around the Horn
to California. He has a quick wit, a shrewd mind,
a volatile temper, and a powerful drive to succeed. Is
a genius in trading stocks and in finance. Macky, Fear, O'Brien,
(03:06):
and Flood all spend the early eighteen fifties prospecting and
mining in California, and each has some success with his
earnings from the diggings. O'Brien opens a marine supply store
in San Francisco. Flood, with money he has made opens
a livery and carriage shop just down the street from O'Brien.
(03:26):
Both lose their businesses though in the depression of eighteen
fifty five. They then join.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Forces and open a saloon.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
O'Brien reasons the only thing that does not go down
in a depression is the consumption of alcohol. He's right,
and their saloon thrives. Flood handles the business and it
operation while O'Brien greets customers and serves roast beef sandwiches
that come complimentary with a drink. By the early eighteen sixties,
(03:57):
Flood and O'Brien are dabbling in mining stock buying and
selling shares and minds the tap into the Greek comstock
load in Nevada, Flood is an uncanny ability in stock trading.
Within a few years, he and O'Brien amass a small fortune.
In eighteen sixty eight, they opened their own stock brokerage
office in San Francisco, Mack and Fair, working separately ALSOP
(04:22):
in the early eighteen fifties prospecting in California. Here's comstock
load historian Ronald James speaking to us at the location
of the Great comstock load Strike, which was made in
eighteen fifty nine by two irishmen, Peter O'Reilly and Patrick McLaughlin.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
The first miners who came here were after gold. Gold's easy.
Gold doesn't combine with many things, so you can actually
even pick it out of their washed dirt with tweezers,
and you hope for a nugget, but you find little
flakes of gold, and that's how you can pull the
gold out the two miners who were coming up here,
a couple of Irish immigrants. We're just looking for a
good place to dam up a natural spring so they
(05:05):
could get water. And they were hoping that they could
find some water, throw some dirt into their long toms,
which were these wooden boxes, and wash the dirt while
they were damming. A natural spring they found, which was
right up here. They started throwing some of the dirt
in there and found immediately that they were uncovering several
ounces of gold. And it was a very good day,
(05:27):
and it was the first of many good days, in fact,
twenty years worth of good days. They were complaining for
those first few weeks after the strike in June of
eighteen fifty nine, these early miners complained about this blue
mud that gummed up their works, because as you wash
away the lighter soil, it leaves gold behind. But it
was also leaving behind this blue mud that was really
(05:48):
obnoxiously heavy, and it was hard to separate it from
the gold. So after several weeks they took an ore
sample over to California and said, what exactly do we
have here. What they found was that if you had
a ton of this stuff, it would produce over eight
hundred dollars in gold when gold was selling for sixteen
(06:09):
dollars an ounce. But what was really surprising that it
was that it would produce over three thousand dollars in
silver when silver was selling for a dollar sixty an ounce.
And so that's really where everyone understood just how wealthy
this or body or using the cornish word load was.
And then it became known as the Comstock load.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
When they learn of the comstock loads strike at Virginia City,
they had over the seers to Nevada.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
The people who came to the comstock were an international
body of people. Nevada actually had in the eighteen seventy
census more foreign born per capita than any other state
in the nation, more than the great immigrant states. You
think of Massachusetts, Boston, and New York, and how vibrantly
(06:57):
international those places were. Chicago, a lot of Europeans, obviously
a large group of Chinese lived here. They came from
all over They often arrived as single men, and so
it was a very masculine community.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
And when we come back more on the lines of
these four risk takers, the silver Kings, the story of
the Comstock load continues here on our American Stories, Leehabib Here,
as we approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
I'd like to remind you that all the history stories
(07:35):
you hear on this show are brought to you by
the great folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn't just
a great school for your kids or grandkids to attend,
but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to find out about their terrific free online courses. Their
series on communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again,
go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their
(07:56):
free and terrific online courses. And we continue with our
American Stories in the story of John Mackie, James Fair,
James Flood, and William O'Brien the Silver Kings. Let's pick
(08:20):
up with Roger McGrath where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Mackie works as a pick and shovel miner for four
dollars a day, then is a timberman for six. Soon
he develops his own business excavating and fortifying tunnels. Much
of us pays in the form of stock certificates. Now
most of these prove worthless, but I few give him
enough money to buy the Kentuck, a mine whose ore
(08:45):
has supposedly been exhausted. Mackie sinks a new shaft in
the Kentuck and hits a rich deposit. During the next
several years, the mine pays over a million dollars in dividends,
huge money in the eighteen sixties. Mackie also has said
he will retire as soon as he has twenty five
(09:06):
thousand in the bank. Well, now he has many times that,
but his appetite has only been wedded for new adventures
and enterprises. Well, Mackie is working the Kentuck. James Fair
becomes superintendent of the Opher, one of the richest mines
on the Comstock. In eighteen sixty eight, he enters into
a partnership to develop new mining properties with Macki.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I'm standing at the base of the Opher pit. And
they called it over after o Fear the gold mine
of King Solomon in the Old Testament. By asserting that
this was the Ulfer mine. They were claiming that this
was a mine of biblical proportions. And they got it right,
because hundreds of millions of dollars came out of the
(09:51):
ground beginning right here.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Back in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Jim Flood and Bibel O'Brien take notice of these two
young up starts on the Comstock. Soon they are discussing
joining forces, and in eighteen sixty nine the San Francisco
Stockbrokers and the Comstock miners form a partnership. By the
early eighteen seventies, through wise investments in daring gambles, the
(10:18):
four Irishmen are challenging William Ralston of the Bank of
California for control of the Comstock. In eighteen seventy two,
they buy the Consolidated Virginia mine for one hundred thousand
dollars from Ralston's right hand man in Virginia City, William Sharon.
Sharon gleefully reports to Ralston the Irishmen have been taken.
(10:41):
The Consolidated Virginia, says Sharon, is a bankrupt piece of property.
Over a million dollars has already been wasted in the
mind and fruitless exploration.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Mac and Fair have a.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Hunch if they cut a new tunnel at a deeper level,
they will hit a vein of oar. Several months they tunnel,
pouring two hundred thousand into the Consolidated Virginia, but hoisting
up nothing but worthless rock.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
William Sharing roars with laughter.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Then one day Macki and Fair in a delicately thin
vein of ore. They try to follow it, but it disappears.
They find it again, but again it disappears. They find
it a third time. This time the vein begins to
widen to a foot, to several feet, to half dozen
feet to twelve feet. Maci and Fair send word to
(11:35):
Flood O'Brien in San Francisco. The stockbrokers quickly buy up
as much outstanding consolidated Virginia stock as they can. The
deeper the new shaft is sunk in the consolidated Virginia,
the wider the vein becomes. At the fifteen hundred foot level,
the vein is more than fifty feet wide. The ore
(11:57):
is so rich waste rock has to be ad do
it to put it through the stamp mill. The irishmen
have discovered the very heart of the comstock load what
is called the Big Bonanza. For the rest of their
lives they are known as the Silver Kings. Here again
(12:18):
is Ronald James.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
In eighteen seventy three, they found what was called the
Big Bonanza. Here the comstock load. The combination of gold
and silver started expanding as they went underground, and at
its widest up to sixty feet wide of nearly pure
gold and silver. The problem is you cannot find a
log stout enough to span sixty feet even twenty feet
(12:44):
without snapping, because it has to hold up a mountain,
and mountains want to collapse in on empty space. So
they brought in a German immigrant by the name of
Philip Diidesheimer who developed the square set timbering method, and
it was basically a series of cube that could be
in modular fashion added to so that whatever the stope,
(13:07):
the empty space left over when you dug out all
the gold and silver, whatever that stope was shaped like,
you could fill it up with a stout framework of timber,
and then you would fill it back with waste rock
as you dug even deeper inside the mine. So it
was a really nice stable way to support a mine
as you were pursuing precious metals, and that was exported
(13:29):
throughout the world. It's only the first of many inventions.
Flat wire cable, the safety cage. This was the first
place where dynamite was experimented with in a big way underground.
It was the first place where air compressed drills were used,
so it became one invention after the next that defined
(13:51):
international underground mining for the next fifty or sixty years.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Bighteen seventy five, the silver Kings are fabulously wealthy. The
Consolidated virgin is paying dividends of a million dollars a month,
something like one hundred million in today's money. San Francisco
is seized by a speculative mania. If the Consolidated Virginia
has hit the big bonanza, other minds might also. Thousands
(14:17):
of shares of mining stock trade daily. People make and
lose fortunes overnight. Char women buy the hotels they scrub
floors in hack drivers give away the carriages to live
on the bill. Chinese gambling dens clothes because Chinese are
gambling in mining stocks instead of fan ten. From eighteen
(14:37):
seventy three to eighteen eighty two, the Consolidated Virginia yields
sixty five million in gold and silver and pays forty
three million in dividends, more than four billion in today's dollars.
Here again is Ronald James.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
The deepest shaft here dropped over three thousand feet three thousand,
two hundred feet. It's overl mile a straight elevator drop.
And keep in mind this is in eighteen seventy eighteen eighty,
when most people have never ridden an elevator anywhere, And
to imagine these people being dropped down over half miles
(15:15):
straight down, it really is something. There was a law
on the Nevada books that said it's against the law
to talk to a hoist operator. He was a fellow
who was running the spool as it lowered the cages down,
and it's illegal to talk to a hoist operator while
he's working because if you distract him and he's off
by ten feet, that could be fatal to the guys
(15:36):
in the cage as they drop down.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
The Silver Kangs all live righteously well and die with
multimillion dollars. States William O'Brien contributes to charities and supports
all his close relatives, especially the MacDonnal and Coleman families
of San Francisco. James flood By San Francisco Real Estate,
erects numerous buildings, funds new business fans, and establishes the
(16:01):
Nevada Bank. The Nevada Bank later merges with Wells Fargo.
He donates large sums to charities. He and his wife
and their children live on the fabulous thirty five acre
estate at Menlo Park. James Fair is elected to the
US Senate from Nevada, but it spends most of his
time accumulating in real estate In San Francisco. He becomes
(16:26):
the city's largest taxpayer. He also establishes two banks and
a railroad. John Mackie forms a telegraph company, lays a
cable across the Atlantic, and breaks the Western Union monopoly.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
He makes more.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Millions during his lifetime. He gives away more than five
million in gifts. He also tears up IOU notes worth
more than two million, like for giving two hundred million
in today's money. When the Great Fire of October eighteen
seventy five destroys the central part of Virginia City, including
the town's Catholic church, Saint Mary's of the Mountains, Mackie
(17:04):
donates much of the money to have Saint Mary's rebuilt
bigger and better than ever. During a slow period on
the comstock, Mackie secretly pays a Virginia City grocer to
supply provisions to any minor at of work. He also
is the largest contributor to Sisters Hospital, requiring only that
(17:25):
his donations be kept confidential. John Mackie, James Fair, William O'Brien,
and James Flood demonstrate that horacial Algier characters were not
confined to novels, but were found for real in America.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And there you have it, the story of the Silver Kings.
This is Lee Habeeb, the Silver King's story. Here on
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com