Pahranagat Valley
Lincoln County, Lincoln County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Pahranagat Valley. Pahranagat Valley is named after a local Shoshone Native American Tribe. Three local springs fill the valley’s lakes, which farmers have used for irrigation since the mid-nineteenth century.In the late 1860s, outlaws pastured hundreds of head of stolen cattle in the valley meadows. In 1865, ore was discovered in the area. The following year, a stamp mill was established at Hiko, twenty miles to the north to crush the ore. Hiko became the center of activity for the valley and the county seat between 1866 and 1871, when local mining declined and Pioche claimed the county seat.The valley received international notoriety in 1867 when Dan De Quille of the Territorial Enterprise published an article titled “The Rolling Stones of Pahranagat,” about magnetic traveling stones. De Quille was notorious for publishing comedy and satire, sometimes mistaken by his readership for truth. In this case, De Quille described these round stones as having a magical quality that, when scattered on the floor, would immediately began travelling toward a common center. De Quille published similar articles on the stones in 1876, 1879, and 1892.The town of Alamo before you, established in 1900, is the valley’s largest present-day settlement. Watered by Pahranagat Creek, the area includes several ranches and the Pahranagat Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Erected by Lincoln County Area Development Committee
The Story
Fed by three springs and named for a local Native people, Pahranagat Valley has been farmed since the mid-1800s and briefly boomed after ore was found in 1865. A stamp mill at Hiko made it the county seat until mining faded and Pioche took the honor. The valley won odd national fame in 1867 when journalist Dan De Quille of the Territorial Enterprise spun his tall tale of magnetic "traveling stones," a hoax so straight-faced that readers took it for truth. Today the town of Alamo and a wildlife refuge share the well-watered meadows.
Why it matters
Pahranagat blends the boom-and-bust of Nevada mining with the frontier press's genius for humbug, a reminder that the Old West traded in stories as much as silver.
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Related people
- · Dan De Quille
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hiko
Lincoln County, NV
Founded as a camp around 1865 and laid out as a townsite in 1866, Hiko took its name from a Shoshone word meaning roughly 'white man' or 'white man's town.' W. H. Raymond hauled a five-stamp mill up the Colorado River to Callville and then 140 miles overland by oxen to process Pahranagat ores, and in late 1866 Hiko became Lincoln County's first county seat. Raymond poured nearly $900,000 into the district before it failed, and after the mill moved to Bullionville in 1870 and the county seat to Pioche in 1871, the town declined.
Eldorado Canyon
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Eldorado Canyon runs east to the Colorado River, and around 1859 prospectors began digging its slopes for gold and silver, organizing the Colorado Mining District. Its three great mines — the Techatticup, Wall Street, and El Dorado Rand — yielded more than six million dollars, while steamboats and barges freighted goods some 350 miles up from the Gulf of California to the canyon's mouth. In 1867 the U.S. Army planted an outpost here to guard the river freight and the miners; the mines revived in the 1870s and worked on until World War II.
Ghost Town of White Hills
Mohave County, AZ
A few miles off this road lie the ruins of White Hills, a mining boom town that flared to life in 1892 and was largely gone by 1898. In just six years its mines yielded some twelve million dollars in gold and silver, with the original strike credited to a Native prospector. Today only foundations and scattered debris remain of the once-bustling camp.
Belmont
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A reliable year-round spring in Buena Vista Canyon long drew Shoshone people to this high valley for rabbit drives and gatherings before silver strikes in 1865 transformed it into the boomtown of Belmont. At its peak it boasted schools, churches, a newspaper, a Chinatown, and a rowdy reputation for brawls, feuds, and vigilante justice, serving as the Nye County seat from 1867 to 1905. When the shallow, high-grade ore played out around 1890, residents drifted off to newer strikes, leaving the surviving courthouse to preside over a quiet townscape.