Exhibit explains Nevada’s role in gold rush

Kimberley McGee

Friday, April 12, 2002 | 9:54 a.m.

What: "Gold Fever! Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush."

When: 9 a.m.to 5 p.m. daily.

Where: Nevada State Museum and Historical Society, 700 Twin Lakes Drive.

Admission: $2; children under 18 admitted free.

Information: 486-5205.

Peering out of faded black-and-white photos, the men's faces are worn, but determined.

They are the die-hard '49ers who, after the California Gold Rush of 1849, traversed the desert in search of gold.

"Gold Fever! Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush," is on display through July 28 at the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society.

The exhibit includes a Nevada spin on the California event. Gold-nugget pieces mined from Southern Nevada, a miner's sewing kit, gold pan and toys such as marbles are included from the museum's permanent collection, Tom Dyer, museum spokesman, said.

"We wanted people to be able to see up close what it was the miners were after," Dyer said. "This is Nevada's history. Without the miners, we wouldn't have become a state."

Lectures will be led May 4 and June 1 at the museum by Charles Greenhaw, a retired Nevada humanities scholar from Reno. He will read and discuss the journals of '49er J. Goldsborough Bruff from 1849-1851, during his Sierra Nevada travels.

"The Gold Rush was so important in creating Nevada," Dyer said. "The Comstock (Load) discovery (in Virginia City) in 1859 led to Nevada becoming a state."

Featured in the exhibit is the story of two early Nevadans, O.D. Gass and Joe Good. In the men's mining for gold and other ores, they settled Las Vegas and Goodsprings, respectively, Dyer said.

The two men were part of the leftover '49ers who went looking for places to dig after the California Gold Rush petered out in the early 1850s.

Whispers of successful mining ventures in Nevada brought many to the desolate area, Dyer said.

Gass eventually homesteaded the area around the Old Mormon Fort on Las Vegas Boulevard North in 1865, a few years after it had been abandoned. That area, where Cashman Center stands, was lush with fruit orchards and Gass's farm.

Good traveled to another abandoned Mormon structure, an ore smelter near Mount Potosi. Although the mining didn't pay off, the area did. Miners stopped by Good's smelting operation and traded supplies. The area soon became Goodsprings, which today is a small desert town.

"It's an historical exhibit that tells a lot about what it was like to be a miner in the desert," Dyer said. "It wasn't easy. But it's a great story."