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« on: June 04, 2011, 04:51:45 pm »
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This is an interesting legend guess we need to check some names and dates.


While stories of lost mines are plentiful, often creating legends that are slow in dying, it is unusual when one tale of elusive ore leads to a full-scale mining rush and the creation of a boom town. Such was the case with the lost Hardin silver and the short-lived mining camp of Hardin City in the desolate Black Rock Desert of northwestern Nevada.

James Allen Hardin came west from somewhere in the eastern states, joining a wagon train headed for Oregon in the spring of 1849. He crossed the plains and Rockies on the Emigrant Trail, and took the Applegate -Lassen Cut-Off from the Humboldt River. The train crossed the Black Rock Desert, rounded Black Rock Point, and finally camped to rest for awhile at Double Hot Springs.

As the emigrants were short on almost everything by this time, especially food, Hardin volunteered to go bunting in the Black Rock Range. He took John Lambert with him to scout the foothills for something to fill the larders. When they were about three or four miles north of Double Hot Springs they crossed a dry sandy wash where something bright caught Hardin's eye. He stopped to investigate and found chunks of metal scattered throughout the sand in the wash. Thinking it might be lead, and being short of bullets, Hardin and Lambert took some of the shiny rock with them. Finding no game that day, the two men returned to camp. Hardin borrowed an oven that night to cast most of the metal be had found into bullets. He kept one chunk of the ore for use later and carried it with him when the train moved on to Oregon.

Hardin eventually settled in Petaluma, California, where he worked as a carpenter. He had forgotten all about the lead he had found until a neighbor of his, an assayer, happened to see it in his shop one day. The assayer asked if he could test the rock; the result showed that Hardin had years before cast lead bullets containing quite a high percentage of silver.

Hardin immediately began assembling a small expedition to the Black Rock area to stake a claim on the ravine. The Petaliona Journal of July 9, 18 5 8, chronicled the party's leaving they go in search of what they believe to be an immense deposit of silver ore.Try as he might, Hardin could not locate the silver again. His group spent the summer of 18 5 8 hunting for it, finally giving up when cold weather set in. The following spring they were all back and others Joined in the search. No one could locate any trace of the silver. The Paiute War which broke out just south of the Black Rock in 1860 put an end to most of the prospecting in that country. It is not likely that Hardin returned to look for his silver during the next five years.

Then early in 18 66 a man from the Honey Lake area of California discovered a ledge that was immediately thought to be the lost silver lode. The word spread like wildfire, and prospectors flocked to the Black Rock Desert to get in on the strike. The camp of Hardin City sprang up near the mines, named in honor of the original discoverer. A small batch of Black Rock ore was worked which yielded significant returns in both gold and silver. When the news was released, the rush intensified. The Humboldt Register, March 24, 1866, reported, "When you see a man sitting in front of a roll of blankets and a frying pan, and behind a Henry rifle, you need not ask him where he is going-he is 'going to Black Rock or burst.' "

Everyone talked about the mines, and during 1866 the Black Rock rush was "all the go," but for some reason only certain shipments of ore gave any returns. Others brought no results at all. Dail's Mill in Washoe Valley was the one that received most of the ore for processing, and it turned out to be the only one which returns on the ore. Other wagon loads were sent to a mill an the Humboldt River, but word came back that the rock was worthless In spite of this seeming contradiction, the rush continsed and Hardin City expanded. A post office and a few businesses opened while two mills were built to avoid sending the ore miles away for refining. The year 1866 was a good year for Black Rock. The true test of the Hardin City ores came the following year, when the mills there began operating in earnest. This time every test showed the ore to be barren of both silver and gold and completely valueless. An expert assayer was called in and, after viewing the situation, claimed that a different reduction process was needed. Modifications were made in one mill, but even then it failed to produce anything. By the middle of 1868 everything had been abandoned and Hardin City passed into history.

Eventually the story came out that the only reason values had been found in the ore at Dall's Mill was because of the process used there. The mill pans had not been cleaned thoroughly before the Black Rock ore was run, and the alkali in the rock picked up the gold and silver left in the pans. Any values merely came from the batches of Comstock ore which had been run previously. Rock foundations, an arrastra, and depressions where buildings once stood are still visible at Hardin City. The only thing that its failure proves is that Hardin's silver had not been relocated. For the past hundred years numerous adventurers have continued to cover the Black Rock area in search of it. True believers insist that the silver is still in an unknown dry wash, but that it has been covered by the sand and dirt of later cloudbursts. Hardin found it once. As the desert terrain changes continuously, someone may find it again.

Reference to Nevada Lost Mines and buried Treasures by Douglas McDonald

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If you believe everything you read you are reading to much.
Treasure is a Harsh  Mistress

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« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2011, 06:47:31 pm »
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Interestingly, Henry Comstock also supposedly found a rich ledge of silver in the Black Rocks.  He supposedly used silver from that ledge to salt worthless mines so he could sell them to suckers.   Could be the same ledge.

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