Beatty, Nevada

click for photo gallery

Population, 1,154. Elevation 3,304. A few miles southeast of nowhere, so its easy to find. Nowdays, a gateway to Death Valley, Beatty started out as a supply station for the Bullfrog Mining District.

History

Before the arrival of non-indigenous explorers, prospectors, and settlers, Western Shoshone in the Beatty area hunted game and gathered wild plants in the region. It is estimated that the 19th-century population density of the Indians near Beatty was one person per 44 square miles (110 km2). By the middle of the century, European diseases had greatly reduced the Indian population, and incursions by newcomers had disrupted the native traditions. In about 1875, the Shoshone had six camps, with a total population of 29, along the Amargosa River near Beatty. Some of the survivors and their descendants continued to live in or near Beatty, while others moved to reservations at Walker Lake, Reese River, Duckwater, or elsewhere.

Beatty is named after "Old Man" Montillus (Montillion) Murray Beatty, a Civil War veteran and miner who bought a ranch along the Amargosa River just north of the future community[6] and became its first postmaster in 1905.[7] The community was laid out in 1904 or 1905 after Ernest Alexander "Bob" Montgomery, owner of the Montgomery Shoshone Mine near Rhyolite, decided to build the Montgomery Hotel in Beatty.[8] Montgomery was drawn to the area, known as the Bullfrog Mining District, because of a gold rush that began in 1904 in the Bullfrog Hills west of Beatty.

The Montgomery Hotel in 1905. It was owned by Bob Montgomery, namesake of the Montgomery-Shoshone Mine in nearby Rhyolite.

During Beatty's first year, wagons pulled by teams of horses or mules hauled freight between the Bullfrog district (that included the towns of Rhyolite, Bullfrog, Gold Center, Transvaal, and Springdale) and the nearest railroad, in Las Vegas, and by the middle of 1905, about 1,500 horses were engaged in this business.[10] In October 1906, the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad (LV&T) began regular service to Beatty; in April 1907, the Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad (BG) reached the community, and the Tonopah and Tidewater (T&T) line added a third railroad in October 1907.[4] The LV&T ceased operations in 1918, the BG in 1928, and the T&T in 1940.[4] Until the railroads abandoned their lines, Beatty served as the railhead for many mines in the area, including a fluorspar mine on Bare Mountain, to the east.

Beatty's first newspaper was the Beatty Bullfrog Miner, which began publishing in 1905 and went out of business in 1909. The Rhyolite Herald was the region's most important paper, starting in 1905 and reaching a circulation of 10,000 by 1909. It ceased publication in 1912, and the Beatty area had no newspaper from then until 1947. The Beatty Bulletin, a supplement to the Goldfield News, was published from then through 1956.[12]

Beatty's population grew slowly in the first half of the 20th century, rising from 169 in 1929 to 485 in 1950.[13] The first reliable electric company in the community, Amargosa Power Company, began supplying electricity in about 1940. Phone service arrived during World War II, and the town installed a community-wide sewer system in the 1970s.[14] When a new mine opened west of Beatty in 1988, the population briefly surged from about 1,000 to between 1,500 and 2,000 by the end of 1990.[15] Since the mine's closing in 1998, the population has fallen again to near its former level.

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatty,_Nevada

Rhyolite Ghost Town
At that time there was only one other person in the whole area: Old Man Beatty who lived in a ranch with his family five miles away. ...

Railroad History in the Mojave Preserve
The line never did reach the coast or Tonopah, stopping just short of Beatty, Nevada, but served as the "neighborhood railroad" for much of the desert, ...

Skidoo - Death Valley National Park
Plans had already been made for an auto line from Beatty, a stage line seemed definite, application had been made for a post office and with its high ...

Amargosa River
The Amargosa River originates in the mountains surrounding Beatty, Nevada, flows through the Amargosa Desert region, and terminates at Badwater in Death ...

Vanderbilt Mine
Eventually, he interested M. M. Beatty, who had an Indian wife, a member of the same “family group” as Bob Black, and after whom Beatty, Nevada is named. ...

Western Shoshoni Myths
Beatty, Nev.; Tom Stewart, Shoshoni, age about 70. Ash Meadows, Nev., where Shoshoni and Southern Paiute were somewhat mixed, but myths claimed to be ...

Greenwater
On September 7, 1907, the Beatty Bullfrog Miner reported that the Green water Miner had stopped publication and that a hundred people were still at ...

Jimville: A Bret Harte Town - Land of Little Rain - Mary Austin
Says Three Finger, relating the history of the Mariposa, "I took it off'n Tom Beatty, cheap, after his brother Bill was shot." ...

Leadfield Ghost Town
The road winds up through the mountain passes for over fifteen miles from Leadfield to the Beatty highway, and climbs from an elevation of 3400 feet at the ...

Western Shoshoni Myths
Desert & Mountain Fine Art Photo Prints, Shoshone Indians · Western Shoshoni Myths: Beatty, Nevada. The Origin of People. Every day Coyote met a girl. ...