The dustbin of history: the fascinating legend of Comstock vein

The following is an article in Uncle John's Bathroom Reading. In fact, everyone dreams of finding a gold mine and making them rich. But after the big * * *? This is an amazing story about one of the greatest wealth in American history.

kill time

1848 65438+ 10 In October, gold was discovered in Satmir, California, which triggered the gold rush and brought more than 300,000 people to this area. /kloc-in the spring of 0/850, some prospectors heading for gold mines in California stopped at the foot of the Sierra Nevada about 20 miles from Reno, Nevada, and waited for the snow to melt before continuing to climb the mountain. Why not look for gold while they are waiting? They fanned out along the edge of the Carson River and walked up the stream that flowed into the river from a nearby canyon. Sure enough, they found some gold ... but it was not enough to prove that they stayed where they were. So after the snow melted a few weeks later, they moved to California. However, before they left, they named this place "Golden Canyon".

Mineable ore area

The discovery of the Golden Canyon spread the news. Every spring, as a new round of settlers and prospectors follow the same route to California, many people stay there long enough to find gold. With the passage of time and the exploitation of the original deposit, the prospectors began to explore further places. 1859 65438+ 10 In October, a prospector named James "Old Virginia" Finney and his three friends took advantage of the good weather to explore a low mountain top in the Golden Canyon, where the soil was yellower than the surrounding lowlands. Old Virginia thinks this is a good sign. When they began to test the soil, each pot could produce gold worth about 15 cents. This is not exactly Sartre's mill, but it is enough to prove piling and further exploring the area.

In those days, tradition and mining law stipulated that no miner could stake a mine bigger than he could mine himself. Old Virgini and his colleagues each claimed a 50×400-foot area, and in the next few days, other miners claimed adjacent rights. More people went to the scene to have a look, but for most people, 15 a pot of gold is not enough, which makes them give up claiming that they are already working.

Falling and rising

When old Virgini and others cleaned all the dirt on the surface through their "rocker", the mining equipment rocked back and forth like a baby's cradle to separate out the gold they had dug deeper. As they did, the amount of gold increased steadily, at first, it was $5 per miner per day, then $65,438+02, and once reached $20, when the price of gold was $65,438+03.50 per ounce? As months passed, the miners dug deeper and deeper, and finally they found a clay deposit that was difficult to mine, and there was almost no gold in it. Most gold mines are small, so when miners dig out simple mines, they think they have found all the gold mines. That's what old Virgini did: he ran out of gold, so he moved on.

That June, just a mile down the hill, two miners named Peter O'Leary and Pat mclaughlin were trying to make money on a 900-foot mining right. This mining right can only produce one or two dollars of gold a day, and these people have heard that there are more mining rights near the West Walker River about 25 miles away. But they decided to stay a little longer, maybe until they earned enough money to pay for moving.

It takes water to sift out gold from sand and soil, and the nearest water source is a small spring. These people decided to build a dam with some strange blue sand found nearby. Almost on a whim, they threw some strange sand into the rocking chair to see if there was any gold in it. It was a heavy and difficult job, but when they cleaned it, they were shocked to find that the whole rocker was covered with a layer of glittering gold. There, the old Virginian discovered an ounce of gold, so that they could put their claims next to the existing ones and even buy the original ones if possible. But who can keep this big secret? If you win the lottery on Monday night, can you really keep it until Tuesday morning? At least one person said so, because the next morning, when these people were about to leave, news about this discovery was everywhere in the Glass Valley.

I'll believe that when I see it.

News, in just a few days, the news of * * * spread from the Glass Valley to the golden land of California. Soon, the unlucky miners there began to give up their existing mining rights and mine eastward. But the real gold rush didn't begin until Judge Walsh transported nearly 40 tons of ore to San Francisco in the autumn of 1859, where gold and silver worth more than1/8000 dollars were produced.

Many major citizens in San Francisco became rich during the 1849 gold rush, and they managed to keep their money since then. They are not the kind of people who go up the mountain to chase new rumors. But when they saw the newly minted gold bars in the banker Walsh's office, everyone believed them, and soon they embarked on a journey across the Sierra Nevada. 1 1 in the first week of June, the mountain road was closed by heavy snow for a whole winter, and hundreds of people, from the richest speculators to the humblest prospectors, came to this area to spend the winter in tents or any temporary places.

Down ... and then

It is easy to extract the surface gold and silver from a deposit like Commstock vein: this ore is very soft, in fact, it can be mined with a shovel. But once all the surface minerals have disappeared, prospectors have to start digging deeply to obtain the remaining resources, and mining becomes more dangerous and expensive. Who knows how long this generous deposit will last? Every time an prospector lifts a shovel of ore, he is faced with a very realistic prospect, that is, nothing can be found underground except worthless soil or rocks.

The idea of experienced prospectors is that the best way to profit from the lucky * * * is to sell it before the limit of * * * is discovered, while the fanatical investors who want to get the highest price are stupid enough to think that the good days will last forever. Therefore, when the wealthy people from San Francisco poured into this camp, many original claimants sold their money for the profits that must have seemed obscene at that time, and then set foot on their road happily.

The discoverer, cryer

Pat maclaurin sold his claim for $3500. His partner, Peter O'Leary, has the longest holding time among all original shareholders. After receiving a dividend of about $5,000, he finally sold his shares for $40,000.

Henry Comstock sold his creditor's rights to Judge Walsh for $65,438+0.65,438+0.00 million, and used the money to open stores in Carson City and Silver City. He hopes that both stores will benefit from the mining industry he helped create. Neither store has such luck. Comstock spent the rest of his life roaming the western United States, looking for a second mother vein. Unfortunately, too. 1in September, 870, Comstock committed suicide in Pozmann, Montana, and his

Naming right

The first discoverer, old Virgini, was also one of the first people to sell out. It is said that he bought some blankets and a bottle of whisky with an old horse worth about 40 dollars, and also bought some other versions of the story. Either way, the old Virginia is not much different. Even if he gets wealth, he won't live long enough to enjoy it. 186 1 In the summer of, he was drunk and fell off a wild horse, and died of head injury a few hours later.

Cyrus' remorse

It didn't take long for the discoverer of Comstock vein to realize how wrong he was selling, and he was out so early. There are thousands of dollars in my pocket, perhaps for the first time in my life. In an era when the highest paid miners earn $4 a day, they must feel great. 19 In the 1950s, the purchasing power of 1000 dollars exceeded that of 100 dollars today.

However, as the new owner of Comstock mining rights digs deeper into the earth, not only will the mineral deposits not gradually disappear as expected by the discoverer, but the scale of the mineral deposits will be larger than that seen by the most experienced mining engineers. Who knows how many sleepless nights these early sellers spent, and they worried about their rights and insisted on it for a while.

Wide pulse

Usually, such rich gold and silver deposits are found in narrow cracks called veins or veins on the earth. They are deposited by geothermal hot water, which dissolves trace amounts of gold, silver or other minerals deep in the earth's crust. Then, when water rises from the cracks in the earth's crust and approaches the surface, the hot water cools, and minerals come out of the suspended matter and deposit in the cracks with high concentration.

This kind of crack is usually very narrow, and the width does not exceed a few feet. But not this time: when the miners dig 50 feet deep, the vein has grown to 10 to 12 feet wide, and as the miners dig deeper, the vein becomes wider. 1860 65438+February, when they reached the depth of 180 feet, the width of the vein exceeded 45 feet. In fact, the traditional method of strengthening mines to prevent landslides is not good enough. Better support technologies must be found. At the end of 1860, a mining engineer named Philip Dedesch Harmo found one. Deidesheimer didn't lean against every wall, but reinforced the ceiling with a beam. Instead, he built a huge cube out of 6-foot-long heavy wood, which can be stacked into any height, width or depth like building blocks.

Capital pool

Once this problem and other engineering problems were solved, Comstock vein began to produce valuable ore, which exceeded the processing speed of mining companies. The traditional horsepower ore processing machine arrastras was soon replaced by a huge steam-powered mill. By the end of 186 1, these concentrator can handle more than 1200 tons of ore every day. That year, more than 2.5 million dollars worth of gold bars and silver bars were extracted from the mine; This figure doubled in 1862, reaching 6 million dollars, and doubled in 1863, reaching more than 2.4 million dollars.

Miners and mine owners earned a lot of money, but in the early days, no one earned more than lawyers. When the Comstock vein is obviously a huge deposit rather than many small deposits, the owner of the original mining right wants it. They sued the new operators and asked them to close down. By the time they succeeded in 1865, more than100000 dollars (equivalent to today's1400 million dollars) and nearly 20% of the mine output were spent on litigation.

Rong Fan town

With the vigorous development of mines, cities are also built on it. /kloc-in the winter of 0/859, those miners who lacked foresight to bring tents to Virginia City had to dig tunnels on the hillside to take refuge, or squat in shacks made of stones, mud and sagebrush. However, by the next spring, a dozen famous stone buildings and dozens of wooden buildings had been built. Before the end of the year, hundreds of companies' share prices rose again.

Miners with so much money and no place to burn have attracted many businessmen and aspiring businessmen, who hope to make a profit by providing them with goods and services. Soon, trucks carrying goods and materials into the city drove for miles. By the end of 1860, this settlement that looked like a refugee camp a year ago was composed of hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, butcher shops, bakeries, tailor shops, candy and cigar shops and doctors' offices. On the dark side, there are pubs, casinos, opium shops, several brothels and at least one brewery.

The first year of growth; In the next few years, Virginia will increase paved streets, gas street lamps, school buildings, opera houses, orphanages and five newspapers (Samuel Clemens, 26, who started to use the pen name "Mark Twain", is also the editor of Virginia City Enterprise, with six churches, telegrams and railways connected to the outside world, and is also the only elevator between Chicago and California. 19 In the early 1970s, when the lack of drinking water became an obstacle to further development, the city introduced a 7-mile-long iron pipe into the Sierra Nevada and began pumping 2 million gallons of fresh water to the city every day. By the mid-1970s of 19, it was on the map.

It shows that Virginia City, with nearly 30,000 residents, is in many ways the most important community between Denver and San Francisco. The wealth of the Comstock vein reshaped the map of the western United States and provided the impetus for 186 1 to create the territory of Nevada. Only three years later, Nevada became Nevada. This also helps to stimulate people's interest in building the first transcontinental railway in the United States, which broke ground in 1863. Reno, Nevada is 0/7 miles from Virginia City/Kloc. 1868 was just a station on the railway when it was built.

Most of the goods going to Virginia have to pass through San Francisco, which has brought great economic growth to the city. The first stock exchange in San Francisco was established at 1862 to trade the shares of Comstock Vein Company. Only 186 1 year, the city has built more prominent brick houses than in previous years, and the development speed in the next few years is still very high.

Hand over your fist.

From 1859 to 1878, more than $320 million worth of gold and silver mines were mined from the Comstock vein, equivalent to $400 billion to $480 billion today. However, although these mines have brought a lot of wealth, most investors who have bought shares of these mining companies for many years have suffered heavy losses in the transaction.

Part of the reason is that the operating costs of these mines are staggering. These mines consume a lot of resources, including millions of pounds of mercury and other chemicals (used to extract gold from ores), more than 600 million board feet of wood and another 2 million sticks of firewood. The salary in Virginia is the highest in the world, because its geographical location is remote, most mining jobs are dangerous, and the cost of living in this community is high. Almost all goods and materials are shipped from hundreds or thousands of miles. In this community, with the mining of mines,

In the cave.

The deepest reaches nearly 3/4 miles below, and the mining cost soars. At these depths, mines are often in danger of being submerged by boiling geothermal hot water. Huge, locomotive-sized pumps must be lowered into the mine to make the water rise and flow out of the mine; The largest one can pump1million gallons of water every day. However, even if the water is pumped away and cool fresh air is injected from the surface, the temperature in these depths is still very high, and the miners can only work continuously for a few minutes, and then retreat to the "cooling room" to water themselves with ice water.

Baron foam

But the biggest reason why investors lose their money is that mine owners are more concerned with manipulating stock prices than managing the company responsibly. Time and time again, when new rich mineral deposits are discovered, the mine owners ask them to mine and process them into gold nuggets as soon as possible, even at the expense of destroying the mineral deposits and losing gold and silver through inefficient processing methods. The owner did this in order to speculate on new discoveries as much as possible, which led to the stock price soaring in the speculative bubble.

Then, when the price reaches the peak, the owner will sell shares in the market and get wealth, and then when the price starts to fall, he will make more money by short selling. In a price increase of 1872, the share price of Belcher Coal Mine rose from $300 to 1575, and then fell back to 108 within 8 months. When the output of coal mine is the highest,

Ordinary investors often lose the most, because speculative fanaticism pushes up the stock price, and no amount of gold and silver can be recovered, so the absurd price of the stock price is reasonable. Even if investors are lucky enough to get dividends from stocks, many people still use the money to buy more stocks to prepare for greater losses when stocks plummet.

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So, why do investors continue to buy shares in these mines year after year? For the same reason, people buy lottery tickets. Even if most people lose, the wealth of a few winners is so attractive that people are willing to take risks. In addition, in the rising stock market, even if the stock is worthless, you can make money. So, if a mine 1400 is really worth only 140? As long as investors can find someone who is willing to pay $65,438+$0,500, the profit of $65,438+$0,000 is as real as the seller takes out gold and silver worth $65,438+$0,000 from the mine. No one really cares that these stocks are not worth their asking price, at least as long as the prices keep rising.

The cycle of prosperity and depression has lasted for nearly 20 years, because every time valuable minerals seem to disappear, new minerals will be discovered and the process will be repeated. In the past few years, people have discovered 16 different important discoveries. The last one is called "Virginia Comprehensive Wealth", which was discovered at the height of 1873 1200 feet. When the output reached its peak in 1876, the merged Virginia received a monthly dividend of1080,000 USD. But the good times did not last long: 1877, when consolidated Virginia dug to the height of 1650 feet, the ore suddenly ran out.

it's over

After the first discovery of gold and silver worth $320 million in 18, no one wants to believe that the merged Virginia may be the end of the Comstock vein, and there must be another rich mineral deposit there, right? In the next decade, these mining companies spent another $40 million to find new sites in mines as deep as 4,000 feet. Initially, these companies paid these expenses by withholding dividends from shareholders. Then, they "evaluate" shareholders, which is the opposite of dividends: if a shareholder wants to hold his shares, he must pay a sum of money for each share he holds. If he refuses, his shares will be owned by the company and can be sold to new investors.

This evaluation system found new but smaller deposits on a fairly normal basis, but with the passage of time, there was no new discovery and investors began to give up hope. Instead of paying the appraisal fee, they gave their shares to the mining company, and the mining company could not even sell the shares at the price without paying the appraisal fee. From 1875 to 188 1, the total stock value of all mining companies in the Comstock vein decreased from $300 million to less than $7 million.

Stocks with a face value of less than one dollar.

1884 shares were once sold at the price of 1500 USD or more, and each share was the trading price of nickel; Even at this price, it is difficult to find a buyer. By then, the mining company went bankrupt, and it was difficult for them to raise enough money to operate the huge water pump to prevent the mine from being flooded. They were shut down one by one. 1886 When the last one was closed in June, the deepest vein disappeared underwater forever. Some mining companies managed to restore * * * A.