The Saturday Evening Post
March 21, 1908
Personal Recollections of W. M. Stewart, of Nevada
Happenings in Washington and Western Mining CampsPanamint City
During the 12 years I was out of the Senate I mined and practiced law. In 1875 engaged with several capitalists, including Senator John P. Jones, in a mining enterprise at Panamint on the west side of Death Valley, which is about 70 miles north of Bullfrog, Nevada.Our headquarters at Panamint were in a mountain ravine where there was grass and plenty of spring water. A hundred miles of desert shut us off from the outside world. In the mountains was a narrow gorge, 12 miles long, the walls of which were very high and so nearly perpendicular as to shut out the sunlight for almost the entire day. About noon a few shafts of brilliance would penetrate that vast darkness.
It was an admirable place for outlaws, and it had not been overlooked. A company of gentlemen engaged in the business of stopping stages, and relieving the express box and passengers of gold and other valuable encumbrances, resided in this secluded nook. They were a picturesque crew, with widebrimmed hats, trousers tucked in their boots, and they were as ornaments enough guns to stock a hardware store. they were bad fellows, outcasts of society, who obeyed no laws, not even their own, for they were not organized into a "gang," but practiced their profession in an entirely independent manner. They discovered veins or loads of precious metals running across the edges of the ravine which terminated in this resort of the road-agents.
We purchased from them most of their mines, which were no good to them, for they were too lazy to work them, at what we regarded a reasonable price. But before selling out and abandoning their stronghold, where peace officers dared not invade, they desired to compromise with Wells Fargo to avoid prosecution after leaving the Panamint. They agreed to pay a portion of the purchase price to the express company which had been a great sufferer at their hands, and, after some negotiations, I succeeded in arranging the matter so that the company absolved them from at least a part of their sins for a cash consideration.
We then put men to work prospecting the mines, and concentrated our efforts forward to ridges about half a mile apart, where croppings on the surface were most bountiful and rich. these mines were known as the Wyoming and Hemlock. We sank two shafts to the depth of two or 300 feet, indoor from 5 to 8 feet wide, between well-defined walls, and averaged from hundred to $300 per done. We erected a very expensive court's bill and reduction works, and continued to my niece veins, but found, to our astonishment, that in each case the order was a "pipe," and extended but a few feet from the shaft in either direction.
A Mean Trick on the Road-Agents
Out of these mines in the or on the surface we extracted about a million money; and, if we could have continued a few months longer, we would have received all our investment back without loss. The abrupt termination of the or involve a large loss to the investors.While our operations were in progress the outlaws were very cordial, and they seem to like locality so well that they could not be persuaded to go away, but hung around and acted affectionate and sociable and kind. We were on such good terms with them that they did not hesitate to ask me when I expected to begin shipping bullion, and then I realized they had sold their minds, not with the intention of giving up the profits, the merely to save themselves the necessity of labor.
Having nothing to do they occasionally fell out with newcomers of their own character, and user weapons with remarkable skill. Those who lost their lives in these encounters are regarded as unlucky-- nothing more. Wells Fargo and Company were in the habit of establishing express offices at mining camps which were productive; not with that bunch of Highway 9 lying around just waiting to swoop down and gobble up every dollar insight.
We were stopped. We were getting out plenty of or, but did dare to run into bullion, because the minute we did the property would change hands.
Finally I had on a steam. I had some molds made in which a ball of solid silver could be run weighing 750 pounds. Then I began smelting Eeyore, and I ran out enormous cannonballs of the precious stuff that could have bombarded a battleship.
When the road agent saw what I was doing their eyes stuck out of their heads, and they remonstrated with me. They acted as though I had cheated them out of property, and said I was the meanest man that ever showed up in that locality, that swear.
"Look-a-here, don't you think you are taking a mighty mean advantage of us?" grumbled one of the bandits one day. " Do you think it's right to play that game on us--and after we sold you the mine, too? Why, we can't haul away one of those boulders."
"All right," said I, " business is business. If you have ingenious enough to carry this stuff off, why, you'll have to suffer, that's all. You can expect me to be sorry for you, can you?"
Well, those fellows barely sweated themselves trying to load one of those silver cannonballs off, but they couldn't budget, they rode off on their horses as mad as warnings, and by and by the road back, and "cussed me out," and said I'd live to feel sorry for being such an ungenerous skunk. And then they rode away, ripping out the most terrible oaths, but presently came back again. It seemed as though they could stay away from nap pile of fine, big cannonballs.
Half a dozen of them pried, and tugged, and strained, and grunted, trying to foist one of them on a mule: with that made the mule mad, and by and by he took a hand in the proceedings, and made those outlaws feel pretty sick. After that they gave it up, and while we were loading five of the silver cannonballs on hand in immense freight wagon they sat around disconsolate and solemn, like pallbearers at a funeral.
We hold that silver out of there like ordinary freight, without regard. There wasn't any place where the outlaws could have driven the wagon except to the settlements, or, I suppose, they would've stolen the whole thing. They could have rolled some of the silver down into a cannon or something like that; but if they had we could have recovered it, and silver in such large packages couldn't have been circulated freely by outlaws, anyhow.
After leaving the Panamint, until 1886, I was actively engaged in the practice of law in San Francisco, Nevada, Arizona and other mining states and territories.
William Morris Stewart