The transition from one to the other of these various conditions was gradual and orderly:  first, a nearly simple tableland; then a grand mer de glace shedding its crawling silver currents to the sea, and becoming gradually more wrinkled as unequal erosion roughened its bed, and brought the highest peaks and ridges above the surface; then a land of lakes, an almost continuous sheet of water stretching from the Sierra to the Wahsatch, adorned with innumerable island mountains; then a slow desiccation and decay to present conditions of sage and sand.

XVI

Nevada’s Dead Towns[21]

Nevada is one of the very youngest and wildest of the States; nevertheless it is already strewn with ruins that seem as gray and silent and time-worn as if the civilization to which they belonged had perished centuries ago.  Yet, strange to say, all these ruins are results of mining efforts made within the last few years.  Wander where you may throughout the length and breadth of this mountain-barred wilderness, you everywhere come upon these dead mining towns, with their tall chimney stacks, standing forlorn amid broken walls and furnaces, and machinery half buried in sand, the very names of many of them already forgotten amid the excitements of later discoveries, and now known only through tradition—­tradition ten years old.

While exploring the mountain ranges of the State during a considerable portion of three summers, I think that I have seen at least five of these deserted towns and villages for every one in ordinary life.  Some of them were probably only camps built by bands of prospectors, and inhabited for a few months or years, while some specially interesting canyon was being explored, and then carelessly abandoned for more promising fields.  But many were real towns, regularly laid out and incorporated, containing well-built hotels, churches, schoolhouses, post offices, and jails, as well as the mills on which they all depended; and whose well-graded streets were filled with lawyers, doctors, brokers, hangmen, real estate agents, etc., the whole population numbering several thousand.

A few years ago the population of Hamilton is said to have been nearly eight thousand; that of Treasure Hill, six thousand; of Shermantown, seven thousand; of Swansea, three thousand.  All of these were incorporated towns with mayors, councils, fire departments, and daily newspapers.  Hamilton has now about one hundred inhabitants, most of whom are merely waiting in dreary inaction for something to turn up.  Treasure Hill has about half as many, Shermantown one family, and Swansea none, while on the other hand the graveyards are far too full.

In one canyon of the Toyabe range, near Austin, I found no less than five dead towns without a single inhabitant.  The streets and blocks of “real estate” graded on the hillsides are rapidly falling back into the wilderness.  Sagebrushes are growing up around the forges of the blacksmith shops, and lizards bask on the crumbling walls.