Last Bonanza Kings
Last Bonanza Kings

Author: Ferol Egan

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2009-08-28

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0874178495

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Much of the wealth from the great mining bonanzas of the nineteenth century American West flowed into San Francisco and made possible the growth of the city and some fabulous personal fortunes. Among the wealthiest and most powerful of the Bonanza Kings were William Bowers Bourn I and his son and successor, William Bowers Bourn II. Their wealth came from rich mines in Nevada’s Comstock Lode and Treasure Hill and California’s Sierra foothills, as well as astute business ventures in the booming port city of San Francisco. Last Bonanza Kings tells their story with all the colorful detail and sweeping sense of epic drama that the characters and their times demand, setting them into the turbulent context of an age of rampant financial and civic growth, major technological advances in mining, lavish philanthropy, and opulent personal lifestyles.

The Bonanza King
The Bonanza King

Author: Gregory Crouch

Publisher: Scribner

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1501108204

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“A monumentally researched biography of one of the nineteenth century’s wealthiest self-made Americans…Well-written and worthwhile” (The Wall Street Journal) it’s the rags-to-riches frontier tale of an Irish immigrant who outwits, outworks, and outmaneuvers thousands of rivals to take control of Nevada’s Comstock Lode. Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When he heard of riches found on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1859, Mackay abandoned his claim and walked a hundred miles to the Comstock Lode in Nevada. Over the course of the next dozen years, Mackay worked his way up from nothing, thwarting the pernicious “Bank Ring” monopoly to seize control of the most concentrated cache of precious metals ever found on earth, the legendary “Big Bonanza,” a stupendously rich body of gold and silver ore discovered 1,500 feet beneath the streets of Virginia City, the ultimate Old West boomtown. But for the ore to be worth anything it had to be found, claimed, and successfully extracted, each step requiring enormous risk and the creation of an entirely new industry. Now Gregory Crouch tells Mackay’s amazing story—how he extracted the ore from deep underground and used his vast mining fortune to crush the transatlantic telegraph monopoly of the notorious Jay Gould. “No one does a better job than Crouch when he explores the subject of mining, and no one does a better job than he when he describes the hardscrabble lives of miners” (San Francisco Chronicle). Featuring great period photographs and maps, The Bonanza King is a dazzling tour de force, a riveting history of Virginia City, Nevada, the Comstock Lode, and America itself.

The Infamous King Of The Comstock
The Infamous King Of The Comstock

Author: Michael J. Makley

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2006-01-09

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0874176697

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William Sharon was one of the most colorful scoundrels in the nineteenth-century mining West. He epitomized the robber barons of the nation’s Gilded Age and the political corruption and moral decay for which that period remains notorious; yet he was also a visionary capitalist who controlled more than a dozen of the greatest mines on Nevada’s mighty Comstock Lode, built the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, manipulated speculation and prices on the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and revived the collapsed Bank of California. One enemy called him “a thoroughly bad man—a man entirely void of principle,” while a Comstock neighbor called him “one of the best men that ever lived in Virginia City.” Both descriptions were reasonably accurate. In this first-ever biography of one of Nevada’s most reviled historical figures, author Michael Makley examines Sharon’s complex nature and the turbulent times in which he flourished. Arriving in San Francisco shortly after the Gold Rush began, Sharon was soon involved in real estate, politics, banking, and stock speculation, and he was a party in several of the era’s most shocking business and sexual scandals. When he moved to Virginia City, Nevada’s mushrooming silver boomtown, his business dealings there soon made him known as the “King of the Comstock.” Makley’s engaging and meticulously researched account not only lays bare the life of the notorious but enigmatic Sharon but examines the broader historical context of his career—the complex business relationships between San Francisco and the booming gold and silver mining camps of the Far West; the machinations of rampant Gilded Age capitalism; and the sophisticated financial and technological infrastructure that supported Virginia City’s boomtown economy. The Infamous King of the Comstock offers a significant fresh perspective on Nevada and the mining West.

The Madigans
The Madigans

Author: Miriam Michelson

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-08-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13:

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DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Madigans" by Miriam Michelson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Forgotten Pioneers
Forgotten Pioneers

Author: Thomas F. Prendergast

Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.

Published: 2001-06

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0898753902

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This is a comprehensive look at the Irish in Northern California from 1835 to 1900. Filled with anecdotes and insider history - this book is a unique piece of California history. The title, Forgotten Pioneers, embodies only half a truth in its application to the subject --- those early settlers in the wilderness of California, men of Irish birth or ancestry who contributed lavishly toward laying the foundations of a new commonwealth on the Pacific. It is the purpose of this book to reinstate in the rank where they belong, some, at least, of these overlooked men "whose character and achievement entitle them to the highest place in the respect and esteem of the people."

The Klondike Fever: The Life And Death Of The Last Great Gold Rush
The Klondike Fever: The Life And Death Of The Last Great Gold Rush

Author: Pierre Berton

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 693

ISBN-13: 1786256738

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“Absolutely first-rate.”—The New Yorker This thrilling story is at once first-rate history and first-rate entertainment. Incredible events occurred in North America after a decrepit steamboat docked at Seattle in 1897 containing two tons of pure gold. So frenzied was the clash for gold and so scant was information about conditions in the Klondike that the rush for riches became a kind of fabulous madness. The entire tale—of which Pierre Berton’s account is the definitive telling—has an epic ring (legends were lived and fortunes were won) as much because of its splendid folly as because of its color and motion. “The definitive account of an affair as wildly improbable as any in North American history.”—Saturday Review “A lively saga of the great gold rush. It is the most complete and most authentic on the subject in English.”—The New York Times Book Review

The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West
The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

Author: Patricia Nelson Limerick

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2011-02-07

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0393078809

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"Limerick is one of the most engaging historians writing today." --Richard White The "settling" of the American West has been perceived throughout the world as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures. But in fact, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded primarily in economic reality; in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. Here she interprets the stories and the characters in a new way: the trappers, traders, Indians, farmers, oilmen, cowboys, and sheriffs of the Old West "meant business" in more ways than one, and their descendents mean business today.