The Mine Claim

Nelson, Nevada

Well, it’s snowing here today in Grand Junction – an early March snow with big wet flakes and a low, heavy grey sky – and it brought to mind a time a year ago when I went hiking during a rare snowfall in the volcanic hills near Nelson, a small mining town south of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Since most of its mines shut down nearly 70 years ago, Nelson, unlike its big city neighbor to the north, is a pretty quiet place. However, in the 19^th century, Nelson was a boom town with a violent reputation, including frequent killings over claim disputes, numerous skirmishes with bandits, and even the occasional Indian raid. Indeed, Nelson’s fame for lawlessness drew deserters during the Civil War because AWOL soldiers from both sides knew the law would never track them down in Nelson. Still, despite this near-anarchy, Nelson produced millions of dollars in gold, silver, copper, and lead.

          

As I said, on the day I was hiking, it was cold and wet, quite unusual weather for the Mojave Desert’s southeastern edge. The sky was totally overcast. Low clouds brushed the tops of the surreal stone bluffs, releasing a spray of rain, sleet, and snow. A narrow stream flowed through the wash I was traversing, and at one point, the watercourse dropped through a series of steep boulders and cliffs, forming diminutive waterfalls and the sound of water descending through stones and sand – a Mojave Desert rarity.

I walked along in near-silence. My sodden boot-steps made muffled noises in the wet sand. Occasionally, a jackrabbit would dash out from under a salt brush, producing a whispering, scrambling sound and the clatter of a kicked stone. At one point, I thought I heard distant voices, but when I stopped, the words resolved into the cold wind meandering through the stunted shadscale and greasewood.

Soon after I heard these illusory voices, there were real gunshots, somewhere behind me, towards the highway. While I realized it was probably someone target practicing, the pistol cracks did give me an uneasy feeling.

Then, I turned a sharp bend in the wash, through a narrow gap between a pair of stone mounds seemingly formed from melting wax the color of old ashes. And there it was – an object I’ve not often encountered in the desert. It was a tall wood stake driven into the sandy earth and propped up with piles of soot colored stones. At the top of the stake, an aluminum plate bore these words: SILVER PRIESTESS CLAIM – SW CORNER.

I had wandered into a silver mine claim.

Encountering that claim marker, I felt like I had dropped back in time to Nelson’s boom days when its gold and silver strikes, some of the richest in Nevada, pulled in adventurers, scoundrels, and thieves – all trying to make their fortune from the volcanic earth’s bounty. The phantom voices and the remote gunfire only added to the illusion of having entered a different century.

It was a magical feeling, one that made my sojourn into the cold, rainy desert well worth the venture.

[Note: the name of the mine claim has been changed to help obscure its location.]