Adventure Magazine Cover — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

778 sued. The rush was of such magnitude that it stands unparalleled in Western min- ing history. Not less than 60,000! people journeyed across the desolate, wind-swept reaches of Nevada’s pines desert during the excitement. Not less than 42,000 of these remained on the ground for a period of several months. Mining-camp records were broken. The maximum population of Goldfield during the height of its boom was approximately 15,000, but it had taken more than three years and the discovery of the world’s high- est grade gold mine to attract this number of people. Cripple Creek for two years after its discovery was little more than a hamlet. Leadville during its first year was! hardly heard of. The scenes enacted in Rawhide ay the boom was at its height beggar description. Real estate advanced in value in half a year in as great degree as Goldfield’s did in three years. Corner lots on the Main Street sold as high as $17,000. Ground rent for plots 25x100 feet commanded $300 a month. During the day as well as at night the gam- ing-tables of the pleasure-palaces were banked with players, and the advyenture- some were compelled literally to fight their way through the serried ranks of onlookers to take a hand in the play. The miners were flush. Many assay offices, accessories of ‘‘high-graders,”’ were turning bullion from extraordinarily rich ore easily hy- pothecated by a certain element among the men working underground. The opening of “Tex” Rickard? ’s gam- bling-resort in Rawhide was celebrated by an orgy that cut a new notch for functions of this kind in Southern Nevada. The bar receipts aggregated over $2,000. The games were reported to have won for Mr. Rickard $25,000 on the first day. Champagne was the common beverage. Day was merged into night and night into day. Rouged courtesans of Stingaree Gulch provided the dash of femininity that was a pre- requisite to the success of the grand bal masque that concluded the festivities. For the nonce social cast was utterly obliter- ated. Months afterward, when flames wiped out the commercial section of the town, the leading dance-hall of the camp, situated a stone’s throw from “Tex” Rick- ard’s saloon, at the foot of Stingaree Gulch, was preémpted without the slight- est hesitation and promptly converted into Adventure headquarters for the distribution of relief supplies. On the densely crowded streets fashion- ably tailored Easterners, digging-booted prospectors, grimy miners, hustling brok- ers, promoters, mine operators and mer- cantile men, with here and there a scatter- ing of ‘‘tin horns,” jostled one another and formed an ever shifting kaleidoscopic mael- strom of humanity. In the environing hills could be heard the creak of the windlass, the clank of the chain, and the buzz and chug of the gasoline hoist, punctuated at frequent intervals by sharp detonations of exploding dynamite. Outgoing ore-laden freighters, hauled by ten-span mule teams, made almost impass- able the roads connecting the camp with near-by points of ingress. Coming from the opposite direction, heavily laden wagons carrying lumber and supplies, and auto- mobiles crowded to the guards with human freight, blocked the roadways. Rawhide’s publicity campaign from a press-agent’s standpoint was a _ howling success. From the standpoint of the pro- moter, however, results were mixed. Nat. C. Goodwin & Company were enabled to make more than a financial stand-off of their promotion of the Rawhide Coalition Mines Company, but they did not profit to the extent they might have, had the times been propitious. I was not long in discovering that my first deductions, made at the inception of the Rawhide boom, namely, that the coun- try was in no financial mood to consider favorably the claims to recognition of a new mining camp, were right, and that it would have been better had the birth of Rawhide been delayed for a period or until the country could catch its financial breath again. Crowds came to Rawhide, but few with money. Flattering as was the extent of the inrush, it was easy to see that if the pub- licity campaign had been suppressed for a while, the resultant harvest would have been immeasurably greater. Had financial conditions been right, the effort to give the camp ‘‘scientific” publicity would un- doubtedly have been crowned with results for ‘the inside” of acharacter that would have meant much larger sumsof money in the bank. Nat. C. Goodwin & Company recognized, too, that they had been working at a great disadvantage by attempting to finance a great mining enterprise at so great a dis- © MICLOOKS (©