Fish Lake Valley
Esmeralda County, Esmeralda County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Fish Lake Valley. This valley was settled when the palmetto mining district was discovered in 1866. In the 1870’s the Griffing & Wyman’s, as well as the Pacific Borax Works, were extracting borax at Fish Lake.The Carson and Columbus stage line ran northward to aurora and Carson City, making connections with log springs in the Sylvania district and Lida. Several local ranches supplied food to the freight industry and mining communitiesA post office was opened at Fish Lake Valley in 1881.This marker commemorates the life and times of W.O. Harrell, known as “Harrell, the irrepressible,” citizen extraordinaire of fish lake valley in the 1870’sSTATE HISTORIC
Erected by Dorcas Women's Club
The Story
Fish Lake Valley drew its first settlers after the Palmetto mining district was discovered in 1866, and by the 1870s firms including the Pacific Borax Works were extracting borax from the lake. The Carson and Columbus stage line ran north toward Aurora and Carson City, and local ranches supplied food to the freight and mining trade, with a post office opening in 1881. The marker also honors W.O. Harrell, remembered as a colorful "citizen extraordinaire" of the valley.
Why it matters
Fish Lake Valley illustrates the twin engines of remote Nevada settlement—mining and the borax trade—and the ranching and stage networks that kept such isolated districts alive.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · W.O. Harrell
Related events
- · Palmetto mining district discovery, 1866
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Blair
Esmeralda County, NV
When the Pittsburgh-Silver Peak Gold Mining Company bought up the major mines in 1906 and found land speculators had cornered nearby Silver Peak, it simply surveyed its own townsite to the north and named it Blair. The company built a 100-stamp mill in 1907 and ran a 17½-mile railroad from Blair Junction to the Tonopah & Goldfield main line. Yet the boom was brief: by 1920 Blair was all but deserted, leaving stone-building remnants and mill foundations as its only survivors.
Belleville
Mineral County, NV
Founded in 1874 by Alsop J. Holmes, Belleville sprang up to mill ore from his Northern Belle Mine at Candelaria, shipping its first bullion bar in 1875. When the Carson and Colorado Railroad reached town in 1881, Belleville's population peaked near five hundred, supporting hotels, restaurants, a schoolhouse, and seven saloons. But once pipelines carried water directly to Candelaria's own mills in the late 1880s, the town lost its purpose and stood deserted by 1892.
Millers
Esmeralda County, NV
Millers owed its existence to the railroad, founded in 1904 as a watering stop on the Tonopah and Goldfield line and named for Charles R. Miller, a railroad director and former governor of Delaware. His influence helped bring a hundred-stamp cyanide mill to town in 1906, and a year later the railroad's repair shops and a second mill set off a brief boom that pushed the population toward three hundred. But by 1911 the shops and a mill had been carted off, the town began to fade, and it was finally abandoned when the railroad shut down in 1947.
Carson and Colorado Railroad Freight Depot
Mineral County, NV
This freight depot was the first railroad building erected in Hawthorne, a surviving remnant of the narrow-gauge Carson and Colorado Railroad that pushed south from Mound House in 1881. Railroad officials laid out the town in the desert and auctioned its first lots that April. The line was later extended into California's Owens Valley, but Hawthorne's rail service ended when the town was bypassed in 1905, and the depot went on to serve as a store, a bar and restaurant, and finally an Elks Lodge hall.