Black Range Tales, a book review

These are the stories of James A. McKenna, or "Uncle Jimmy", as the community came to know him in his later years. Uncle Jimmy's stories of his life and adventures are unique little windows into a time long past. There is no bragging here, no attempt to write a wild, shoot-em-up adventure story. These are true tales of Indian wars, mining adventures, the miners and gamblers, theives as and good and honest folks. Real life, as the pioneers lived it, in the natural, colorful language of the time.

Set in the Black Hills of New Mexico, those familiar with the state will recognize the names of many of the mines and settlements still on the map. Silver City is at the center of the area where most of the stories take place. Mines, both lost and well known figure largely in his tales, as well as many mining towns no longer in existence. The geographic and geologic details of mining camp locations make the book a great resource for ghost town hunters.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1951 Uncle Jimmie began working his way west at an early age. He did it the way most folks did at the time... a little trapping, a little herding, a little working on the riverboats. He landed in the southwest and settled in  prospecting for silver and gold, as the area was heavy with mining opportunities. When he wasn't prospecting he serving as a justice of the peace, or any one of his many other roles. Along the way he met some pretty fascinating folks. In delicious detail Uncle Jimmy tells of surviving battles with Indians, near misses in mining accidents, hunting bear and dealing with the shysters attracted to the easy money of a mining community. Many of these fascinating characters, like the fellow members of the Spit and Whittle Club, helped him tell the stories. All together, it's a captivating read, especially so if you happen to be familiar with the area and can envision the rugged landscape he describes.

This edition (1969) has some improvements over the first edition, published in 1936. Updates include a map in the front that covers most of the locations mentioned in the stories, and the addition of an index. The index is fairly complete, and would certainly be useful for referring back to stories for details on specific mines or individuals mentioned. Even better, the text has been scanned and is available as a completely searchable document on Ancestry.com, for those with a membership to that service. Search Black Range Tales.

Black Range Tales, chronicling sixty years of life and adventure in the Southwest.
James A. McKenna. The Rio Grande Press, 3rd edition, 1969
The book is available from several retailers, and as it has been reprinted several times, check closely to see that your edition includes the index and map. The book is not available in electronic format, other that the source mentioned above.

A big Thank You! to David and Stephanie Nishikida for giving me a copy of Black Rock Tales!

De Lamar and Silver City, Idaho

We liked the Snake River RV campground so well we decided to stay another night. We're so close to Silver City, a ghost town we'd visited in the early '70's, that we thought we go back and see how it's weathered the years.

We took the route east from highway 95 turning east on Cow Creek Road we passed a couple of old but still working ranches and a lot of very well fed cattle. A few miles in we came to the site of De Lamar. This silver mining town was build by a retired ship's captain, and he named it after himself. He obtained several mining claims, built a school, hotel, stores and other buildings. The town pretty much folded up many years ago, though with the rise in metals prices there is an open pit operation opened up nearby.
As far as the town, there are only the tumbled down remnants of the mill and a few cabins in various stages of decay scattered along both sides of Jordan Creek. The two cabins we peeked in to are luxuriously furnished with large pack rat nests, made of the stuffing from mattresses left behind by the last human residents and large sticks the rats have collected. In front of one cabin remnants of a lady's garden, a lilac bush and small patch of rhubarb, are nearly overrun by wild roses and sagebrush.

They say all that glitters is not gold, and that's definitely true here. A short distance east of De Lamar the road sparkles like diamonds in the morning sun. The gem-like sparkles are actually only bits of eroded mica and quartz. The effect is a stark contrast to the other travelers we met on the road . . . we arrived at the peak of the annual Mormon cricket migration! The road was covered for miles with thousands of red and black crickets, all heading west! It's a little creepy to see so many insects move with such organized purpose!

Silver City is just east of the summit. The buildings are all privately owned, some serving as full-time residences, some as weekend cabins. Many are in various stages of restoration. The hotel and a gift shop are the only businesses in town, and they are open primarily on the weekend. There's a lot of snow in the winter, up there at over 6,000 ft., from 4-6 feet, so their season is May-October. Most residents leave town for warmer climes in the winter, leaving a solitary watchman in charge. The town hasn't had electricity for several years, so most of the buildings have solar panels and propane as their power sources. Understandably, they are very careful in their use of power.

We stopped in the hotel to chat with the owner and have a beer at the antique bar, and it was dark! 'Makes sense considering the limited power supply, and I'm sure the old timer's didn't have "lights on" during the day either. Whether one used candles or lamps, why would you use up fuel in the middle of the day?  As we sipped our beer we wandered around the edges of the dining room/bar enjoying the photos and antiques in display cases. We also invested in a book, "Ghost Towns of Idaho -  The Search of El Dorado", by Bruce Raisch. We won't have time this trip to explore very many of the towns he writes about but the book will be a great resource for planning future trips, and good reading. The author's website has info on ghost towns in other states too.

We drove around town, took a lot of photos as the old buildings are just too picturesque to resist, and then had lunch in the campground. So many of the old mining towns are disappearing due to vandalism, It was nice to see that the town's been so well taken care of.

Here's the slide show of the trip. Click on it to go to the larger version and get the captions.

Unionville, Nevada

The Humboldt Mountains in Nevada at one time supported a multitude of mining towns. I have an old map with the locations of many of them, so we set out to see what we could find. First along the route we came to a state historic marker for Star City. We didn't drive up into the canyon where the town site was, as my research had indicated there wasn't much there. Most of the towns are gone now, but one in this area is still home to several residents. Nestled in  Buena Vista Canyon on the east side of the Humboldt Range Unionville is classed as a "living ghost town". There were about 20 residents at the last official count.

In many ways the history of Unionville parallels that of the state as a whole. The town original name was Dixie, as it was settled by southern sympathizers. Later, as more Union sympathizers moved in, the town's name was changed to Unionville. [Nevada's state motto is "Battle Born" because the state was brought into the union during the civil war, in part because of the wealth of gold and silver, but largely because it would be a non-slave state and enhance the Union's strength]

In the ten years of Unionville's greatest activity about three million in silver was taken from the mines. One of the largest mines is still visible near the main road.  Now, the town is home to several families (and a lot of cows and horses!) but there's little active mining, and the only business is an inn. Some of the homes are new, others are older buildings that have been restored and added on to. One ranch clearly maintains a connection to the history of the town, it's called "Dixie Ranch". There's a nice little park at the upper end of town, named for a local woman who used to arrange Easter egg hunts for the children. We had lunch there, waving at motorists who passed by, exploring the old buildings in the park. The little dugout in back was home to Sam Clemens for about 3 weeks, just long enough for him to learn that mining was hard work! He decided to go to work as a newspaper reporter to make the grocery bill. We also hiked up to the end of town and crossed the creek. With a nice supply of water it's no surprise the town has continued to this day.

After lunch we traveled on down Lovelock-Unionville Rd ., which turns to gravel right after Unionville, to explore the sites where other mining camps were once established. Little remains, as once a camp was abandoned any wood was usually taken to build at other sites, and once the roof is gone adobe doesn't hold up for long. We did find a bit of a stone foundation where the town of Spring Valley once stood. There's been a lot of more recent reworking of the old tailings, as one can tell by the deep trenches and old pipes laying around. After Spring Valley, which is pretty much at the pass, we were at about 5,500 feet, and suddenly there were small juniper trees where we'd had only sagebrush before. It was also about 10 degrees cooler! Those old boys knew what they were doing when they built up there in the hills.

There's still gold in them there hills! The old mining camp of Rochester is now a large, modern mine, part of the Rochester Group, Cour d'alene Mining Corporation. From here on out the road is paved, and a smooth ride back to camp.