Finding gold in Las Vegas

While it may be true that everything that glitters in Las Vegas is not gold, much of it is. During a brief Las Vegas visit earlier this year, I had chance to do a little prospecting and it didn't take me long to strike gold. Certainly, there's plenty for sale in the shops and galleries that accompany every casino/hotel complex, not to mention the gold that adorns the ears, necks, wrists, fingers, ankles and toes of so many sunbathers around the several pools I visited. Numerous casinos along the Strip's Gold Coast have amassed shimmering stacks of bullion as a goad to gamblers. The collection of rare gold coins on display in the Mandalay Bay is supposedly worth $40 million, though that figure may be low considering the recent run-up in the price of that precious metal. Perhaps the most impressive bit of gold I saw in Las Vegas was resting regally inside a thick glass case near the elevators in the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino where I stayed, a chunk so significant it had its own name. Weighing in at 875 troy ounces (61 pounds 11 ounces), "Hands of Faith" is the largest nugget of gold on display in the world. After two days of walking past this gargantuan globule that made a millionaire out of the man who unearthed it in 1975 near his home near Wedderburn, Australia, I felt ready to go find some for myself. When I heard about the possibility of taking a tour to a real gold mine outside Las Vegas, I staked a claim. "X" marks the spot I didn't have to wear a blindfold out to the Techatticup Mine. In fact, there was no rigor involved at all. Organized by Pink Jeep Tours, the four-hour excursion ventured some 50 miles out of the city into Eldorado Canyon. The sparkling pink Jeep picked us up at the hotel and conveyed four of us in air-conditioned comfort up out of the sprawling bustle of the Las Vegas Valley and south toward the Colorado River. Even away from the white hot growth of the Strip, it's clear to see that civilization is spreading in all directions. As I rode on the highway through the suburban city of Henderson, the fastest-growing community in the country, it seemed to me that new construction was rising right before my eyes. That image changed as soon as we crested the hills, and the desert landscape abruptly asserted itself. A dry, seemingly empty landscape shimmered in the heat and dust all the way to the horizon. Turning south at Railroad Pass, we headed south on U.S. 95 toward Laughlin and after 10 miles, east on to Nevada 165. The two lanes of asphalt snaked up from the barren, baking valley into the hills above the Colorado River. At the old mining settlement of Nelson, the road entered the deepening draw of Eldorado Canyon. Sun-dried clusters of wild flowers bunched around the collection of weathered trailers and sheds were the only color other than the ocher earth and rocks. You wouldn't know it today, but back in the 1880s Nelson was a boomtown, Nevada's biggest settlement in Nevada. Back then, more men called the 10-mile draw of Eldorado Canyon home than all of the vast Las Vegas valley. The Spanish first searched this area in the early 1700s looking for silver. They found traces of that metal but not enough to make it worthwhile to brave the blast furnace environment. Somehow they totally missed the rich veins of gold that flecked just beneath the canyon's flanks. In the 1850s, prospectors began sluicing the side streams that cut down to the Colorado. They kept their good fortunes to themselves, but in 1858 steamboats started making their way up the river from Yuma, Ariz., and the canyon's population began to swell, with all the attendant problems of greed, claim jumping, murder, vigilante justice, riots and renegade Indian attacks that make Western novels so colorful. By 1861 prospectors had unearthed the Salvage Vein, a rich, vertically stacked ribbon of gold ore that ran through a steep ridge along one side of the canyon about five miles up from the river. Starting high up on the hill, they began cutting down into the vein, which was seldom more than 100 feet wide. A series of shady dealings led to the formation of the Techatticup Mine, whose name supposedly derives from the Paiute word for hungry, something early settlers heard frequently from the starving Indians who inhabited the dry hills. Southern Nevada's oldest and most famous gold mine was once owned by Sen. George Hearst of California, father of William Randolph Hearst of publishing fame. For seven decades, miners dug deeper into the hard rock. Working with picks and black powder in chambers lit by candles, they would blast and gouge out horizontal tunnels following the vein through the hillside. When the ore gave out on one level, they would carve a new one just beneath it. Dragging out the broken rocks, they would transport the rubble down the hill. There it would be pulverized, then treated with cyanide to separate out the gold that was then stamped into bullion. In that way, they eventually excavated a tier of a dozen tunnels, the lower of which were reached by a long tunnel cut into the hillside some 500 feet below the upper entrance. Because the mine was vertically stacked and open at the top, it acted as a fresh air chimney. The constant temperature of 70 degrees was at least some relief from the blistering heat outside. Reportedly, miners would sleep inside their workplace just to keep cool The sprawling operation engendered settlements, all irrigated by water pumped up from the river. Over the years, the Techatticup produced more than $250 million worth of gold, but by World War II, the ore was played out, and over the next 30 years, the town of Nelson dwindled, and the mine works and huge tailing piles were abandoned to the scorpions and rattlers. About 10 years ago, the 51 acre site of the Techatticup Mine was purchased by Tony Werly, who operated a river adventure outfitter in nearby Boulder City. Along with members of his extended family, Werly staked a claim in the mine's future as a tourist attraction. In addition to clearing enough rubble from mine tunnels to allow visitors to take an hour's excursion inside, they have stabilized various ramps and ladders and installed electric lights and emergency phones. Otherwise the mine is exactly as it was when miners worked around the clock a century ago. Waiting for the guided tour in the small general store, I had a chance to look through the display of old photos, tools and other mining memorabilia. They provided plenty of background on Eldorado Canyon and the gold fever that drove its glory days. As the small group followed our guide down the long, closet-door-sized tunnel into the mine, we were warned to watch for rattlers that sometimes came in to escape the heat of day. We didn't encounter any, but walking through the long corridor that had been painstakingly blasted through solid rock to reach the vein certainly gave me a somewhat claustrophobic idea of what it was like to have been a miner. And deep inside the mine, when he switched off the electric light and we stood a few minutes in Stygian darkness, it was hard to remember that golden glitter that brought men here. If the idea of getting into an authentic, unvarnished ghost gold mine interests you, Techatticup is the place to be. For travelers who can get out to Eldorado Canyon on their own, the two-hour mine tours cost $9.95 for adults and $4.95 for children. For information: 1-702-291-0026; www.eldoradocanyonminetours.com. Four-hour Pink Jeep Tours from Las Vegas cost $99 per person, including lunch. For information: 1-888-900-4480 or www.pinkjeeplasvegas.com.
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