Delamar, Nevada
Encyclopedia
Delamar, Nevada, nicknamed The Widowmaker, is a ghost town in central eastern Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
along the east side of the Delamar Valley
Delamar Valley
Delamar Valley is one of the Central Nevada Desert Basins and the southern portion of the Dry Lake Watershed, including a low point on the serpentine section of the Great Basin Divide in Nevada....
. During its heyday, primarily between 1895 and 1900, it produced $13.5 million in gold.
History
In 1889, prospectors John Ferguson and Joseph Sharp discovered gold around Monkeywrench Wash. A mining camp was then born west of the Monkeywrench Mine. It was called Ferguson.In April 1894, Captain Joseph Raphael De Lamar
Joseph Raphael De Lamar
Joseph Raphael De Lamar was born in Amsterdam, Holland, September 2, 1843. His father, a banker in Amsterdam, died when he was six years of age, and the lad in love of adventure went aboard a Dutch vessel that plied to the West Indies...
bought most of the important mines in the area and renamed the Ferguson camp as Delamar. In the same year, a newspaper called the Delamar Lode began publication and a post office was opened.
Soon, the new settlement boasted more than 1,500 residents, a hospital, an opera house, churches, a school, several businesses and saloons. Most buildings were made of native rock.
By 1896, the Delamar mill was handling up to 260 tons of ore daily. Water for the camp was pumped from a well in Meadow Valley Wash
Meadow Valley Wash
The Meadow Valley Wash is a southern Nevada stream draining the Meadow Watershed that is bordered on 3 sides by the Great Basin Divide. The wash's Lincoln County headpoint is in the Wilson Creek Range, and the wash includes 2 upper confluences . Panaca is along the upper wash, and downstream of...
, some twelve miles away. Supplies and materials traveled even further, by mule team over mountainous terrain from the railroad head at Milford, Utah
Milford, Utah
Milford is a city in Beaver County, Utah, United States. The population was 1,420 at the 2010 census.-History:Although there were ranches in the area in the 1870s, Milford did not come into being until the arrival of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad in 1880.-Milford Flat...
, which was 150 miles from Delamar.
Silicosis
The gold in the Delamar mines was embedded in quartziteQuartzite
Quartzite is a hard metamorphic rock which was originally sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to gray, though quartzites often occur in various shades of pink...
which when crushed created a fine dust. Miners breathing the dust often developed silicosis
Silicosis
Silicosis, also known as Potter's rot, is a form of occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust, and is marked by inflammation and scarring in forms of nodular lesions in the upper lobes of the lungs...
and the town became known as a "widow-maker."
Present day
Many ruins now stand semi-intact in the Delamar ghost townGhost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
region. Foundations can easily be seen from adjacent hills. There are two graveyards, which have been vandalized. The area is honeycombed with mines and mineshafts, but in recent years the main shaft has been blasted closed.
Wild horses roam the area. The nearby dry lake is known to pilots as Texas Lake because its outline resembles the state of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.