Fairview Nevada
Fairview Nevada Overview
Fairview had a few silver booms between 1905 and 1917.
Fairview appears on maps as a stop or station for the Pony Express. The location of the station is about 5.7 miles north of the site of Fairview.
The town boasted 27 saloons, hotels, banks, assay offices, a newspaper, a post office, and a miner’s union hall.
Year Established/Founded
1905
Fairview Nevada History
Taking its name from the nearby Fairview Peak, this substantial town that boasted 27 saloons, hotels, banks, assay offices, a newspaper, a post office, and a miner’s union hall soon came into being.
Fairview is currently a ghost town. One of the few remnants of the old town is the bank vault from the first town site’s bank; the vault can be seen from the nearby Austin-Lincoln Highway.
Fairview changed locations twice, once to move closer to the mines and mills in which the town’s residents worked, and once because the town outgrew the narrow canyon in which the second town was sited
From the 1923 publication:
The district was discovered by F. O. Norton in 1905. A boom ensued the following spring which gave the district a temporary population of 2,000. The principal mine is the Nevada Hills which was located by P. Langsden in January, 1905. The Nevada Hills M. Co. erected a 20-stamp mill at this mine which was operated from September, 1911, to June, 1917, when it was shut down for lack of ore. Since the Nevada Hills M. Co. ceased operations, a small amount of work has been done in the district by leasers and by other companies.
The Fairview District is located at Fairview on the W. slope of Fairview Peak in S. Churchill Co. The town of Fairview is 42 m. E.S.E. of Fallon which is on the S. P. R. R. Fairview has an altitude of 4,600 ft., the mines are about 1,000 ft. higher, and Fairview Peak rises to a height of 8,250 ft.
Mines. Three companies have recently been active in the Fairview District.
The Dromedary Hump Cons. Ms. Co., with a capital stock of 2,000,000 shares is in charge of E.W.Stratton., the Chalk Mt. Silver-Lead Ms. Co., is under the management of E. M. Dawes of Reno. E. C. Smith is Pres. of the Nevada Hills M. Co., Reorg., with office at 225 N. Center St., Reno. This company owns the Nevada Hills Mine and has a capital stock of 1,250,000 shares of 10 cts. par value of which 184,000 remain in the treasury. Its stock is listed on the San Francisco Exchange.
From an undated mining report:
The discovery of rich float by F. O. Norton in the summer of 1905 led to the location of silver-bearing veins on the northwest side of Fairview Peak later that same year. By July 1906, prospectors and miners has staked close to 400 claims covering 12 square miles. The most valuable claims were staked in January 1906 by Perly Langdell of Colorado who located the Boulder and Boulder No. 1 claims on an ore-bearing, 18-inch quartz vein in an andesite outcrop near the head of a narrow canyon. The Boulder claims were sold tow. A. Webber in March 1906 for $7,500; Webber cleared $8,000 on the first ore shipped from the claims. Later the same year, the claims were sold to the Nevada Hills Mining Company for $25,000. The Nevada Hills Mining Company, in 1911, consolidated with the Fairview Eagle Mining Company, forming the nucleus of properties thereafter known as the Nevada Hills Mines (Schrader, 1947, p. 65-66). The Nevada Hills Mine was the major producer in the Fairview district from the time of consolidation until 1917 when it closed for lack of ore. From 1906 to 1922 the camp produced over 48,000 ounces of gold and over 4,700,000 ounces of silver, most of which was credited to the Nevada Hills Mine (Vanderburg, 1940, p. 25). The mine was opened to a depth of 1,100 feet and was mined on 9 levels from more than 43,000 feet of workings. The years of peak production were 1906 to 1916; the highest yearly production was achieved in 1912.
During this same time period (1906-1916) a number of smaller properties were located along the west-central and southern portions of the district. The most notable of these include the Mizpah, Grand Central, and Jelinek mines in the west-central area and the Nevada Crown, Nevada Fairview (Snyder or Gold Coin) and Bluff Mines to the south. Although some of these mines have very sizeable workings, no production is recorded from any of them.
Following the closure of the Nevada Hills mill in 1917, the district rapidly declined. In 1919 the Fairview Post Office closed and the town, for all practical purposes, ceased to exisst. Claims in the Fairview district have been maintained over the years, however, and sporadic prospecting continues in the area. Recently, several major mining companies have examined the district searching for bulk-mineable deposits of gold and silver. In the late 1960’s, patented mining claims covering a large portion of the Fairview district were acquired by the Howard Hughes organization. When the Hughes company, Summa Corporation, later divested itself of its mineral holdings, the Fairview properties were sold to Houston Oil and Minerals Company, Houston was later acquired by Tenneco Minerals. Tenneco Minerals, in late 1986, was purchased by Echo Bay Mines, a large Canadian gold mining company. Houston explored its holdings at Fairview and South Fairview in the late 1970’s but these properties are not active at the present time.
Timeline
- Summer 1905 – Frederick Otto Norton discovered silver ore and the mining district established
- January 1906 – Nevada Hills mine located by P. Langsden
- March 1906 – George S. Wingfield and George Nixon purchased several claims
- March 3, 1906 – Fairview News starts publications
- April 1906 – The post office opened
- July 1906 – Prospectors and miners staked close to 400 claims covering 12 square miles.
- 1908 – The boom had passed and production leveled out
- February 15, 1908 – Fairview News stops publication
- 1911 – The Nevada Hills Mining Company began an era of profitable milling that lasted until 1917
- May 1919 – The post office closed
Mines
Gold, silver, lead, and copper.
From the 1923 publication:
Geology. Fairview Peak is composed of Tertiary eruptives resting upon a basement of Paleozoic schists and limestones. The volcanic rocks in the order of their age are :-dacite tuff, earlier andesite, later andesite, tuff, and rhyolite, with some later tuffs and flows of minor importance, according to Greenan.
Ore Deposits. The ore deposits are fissure veins in and at the borders of the earlier andesite. The veins are intersected by normal faults and post mineral fracturing has occured in them. The Nevada Hills vein is from 1 ft. to 15 ft. in width. Its gangue consists of quartz, altered andesite, calcite, and smaller amounts of pyrolusite and rhodochrosite; and its ore minerals are argentite, ruby silver, horn silver, pyrite, chalcopyrite, galena, tetrahedrite, sphalerite, silver, and gold.
Post Office
April 23, 1906 – May 31, 1919
View the list and history of Nevada Post Offices.
Newspaper
Fairview News
March 3, 1906 – February 15, 1908
The Population of Fairview Nevada
In 1905 there was a short-lived population of 2,000 residents.
Elevation
Unknown at this time.
Nevada Historical Marker Category
Mining
Nevada Historical Marker Marker Type
Blue marker
Nevada Historical Marker Number
Fairview Nevada is Nevada Historical Marker #202.
Click here to view the full list of Nevada State Historical Markers.
County
GPS Coordinates
- Marker – 39.283282, -118.214901
Nevada Historical Marker Transcription
Fairview was part of the renewed interest in mining, triggered by the strikes in Tonopah and Goldfield. Discoveries in 1905 of a rich silver float led to a boom that lasted through 1906 1907. A substantial town that boasted 27 saloons, hotels, banks, assay offices, a newspaper, a post office, and a miner’s union hall soon came into being. By 1908, the boom had passed and production leveled out. During 1911, the Nevada Hills Mining Company began an era of profitable milling that lasted until 1917. Production amounted to 3.8 million dollars in silver values.
George Wingfield and George Nixon, prominent Nevada mining promoters of the time, bought some of the first claims in Fairview to give impetus to a boom.
STATE HISTORICAL MARKER No. 202
STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN COLONISTS
RENO CHAPTER
References Used
- State Historic Preservation Office – Fairview Nevada
- Lincoln, Francis Church, (1923), Mining Districts and Mineral Resources of Nevada
- Newspapers.com
- Wikipedia – Fairview Nevada
Fairview Nevada