An Overview of Nevada's Eureka & Palisade Railroad
Continued

Dan Markoff's restored Eureka & Palisade No.4, Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1875.
Photo courtesy of Don Richter

Mills and his brother sold one-half of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad to William Sharon, A. K. P. Harmon, John Shaw, Isaac L. Requa, and Thomas Bell. Two famous names in Nevada mining and financial history, Sharon and Requa, then became attached to yet another enterprise. After the new investors came into the operation, D. O. Mills placed his brother, Edgar as president of the fledgling railroad. After suffering a short illness during the trip from San Francisco, the less known Mills began recruiting men to finish the road to Eureka. At least one hundred of these men were Chinese, undoubtedly veterans of the Central Pacific tracklaying crews of Charles Crocker. This was August 1875. The Sentinel reported that the idea now was to "to crowd the enterprise through to completion with all possible dispatch." Mines were booming to the south and no time was to be wasted. Geo. W. Norton, lately of the competing Utah railroad group, had been working as civil engineer of the E. & P. and moonlighting by setting up Pritchard's little town building adventure at Alpha. He was put to work surveying a route over Garden Pass and on to Eureka. Other able leaders were brought on board and the grading moved towards the South once more. The graders out paced the slowly arriving supply of rails and ties. The local pines were not useful because of their small size. Additionally, much of the light forest was already being taken to burn as charcoal. The annual consumption of the smelters at Eureka was approximately 1-1/4 million bushels per year. The slopes of the mountains within a sixty mile radius of the town had been denuded to burn wood for charcoal. A force of about 800 local "carbinari", men of Italian descent, supplied the material to the smelters for ore reduction. The smelters required at least twenty-five bushels of charcoal to smelt each ton of ore.

Meanwhile, coaches painted deep yellow were arriving at Palisade. Bilmeyer and Smalls of York, Pennsylvania was the constructor. Over fifty freight cars of various descriptions were also on hand. The railroad was really taking shape. More locomotives arrived from Baldwin. Palisade was becoming a boomtown with all the activity. Pine Valley and Eureka would be connected to the outside world by rail! The town of Palisade was reported to have about 250 inhabitants, served by two hotels, two saloons, two stores, a barber shop, a post office and approximately  twenty-five dwellings in addition to the railroad facilities operated by the two lines in the small town. The E.&P. built a two story depot and maintained locomotives and rolling stock in nearby structures.

The E.& P. was completed in October 1875. By this time, Eureka was Nevada's second largest city with a population of about nine thousand people. Additionally, the Ruby Hill Railroad, serving the mines of Eureka was purchased for seventy five thousand dollars. This, and some added trackage, raised the total mileage of the railroad by six and one half miles to more than ninety-six miles. The sky was dark with the smoke from processing up to seven hundred fifty tons of ore per day. At one point there were nineteen furnaces running. One of the gaseous vapors resulting from this operation was lead. Vegetation near the smelters was non-existant because of the poisonous smoke. Eureka also had the social problems that were the bane of Old West. In January 1876, the "601", a vigilance committee, gave notice to miscreants to leave town or suffer the consequences. Others deemed not worthy of local residence were the Chinese. Rallies began in March, culminating in a demonstration against them in December. This resulted in a number of the Chinese workers being driven from their jobs on the railroad. Three murders had been perpetrated against these people in the intervening months.

Eureka is generally given credit for being the birthplace of silver-lead smelting in the United States. It has been called "the cradle of modern lead blast furnace smelting". The ores were conducive to this process because of their composition. The component metals made the ores nearly self fluxing and particularly amenable to the smelting process. In the years 1869-1879, a large percentage of pig lead in the United States was produced at the smelters of Eureka. It was only in the latter years that Leadville, Colorado took the honor of the highest production volume away from the Nevada operations. Eureka also was one of the first mining districts to use a leasing or "tribute" system of mining. This was the equivalent of the modern-day franchise. The mine owners did not have to deal with the miners as employees. 

In 1878, shipments of bullion had reached $7,000,000. In the meantime, fires, floods, labor strife and a smallpox epidemic were a few of the adversities faced by the people of Eureka. The Italian carbinari determined that they were being cheated by false weight measuring of their goods. The "Fish Creek War" resulted in confrontations and some deaths among the workers. The disputes fizzled out and no gains were realized by the charcoal burners. The peak of production came in the first few years of the 1880's. The smelters of Eureka were processing 745 tons of ore per day. The railroad was returning a very good investment for Mills and other investors. The first year of operation had repaid the cost of the construction. In February, 1881, railroad management proposed a new extension to the south, called the Eureka and Colorado Railroad. The summer of that year saw surveys and initial grading started into White Pine County. As with many projects of that time, it was soon dropped and quietly receded into history.

The Ruby Hill Mining News, a local newspaper, reported proudly in August 1881, that if all the shares in the Eureka Consolidated Co. in 1871 had been retained by their purhasers a profit of $4,100,000 would have been realized. This was in addition to the fact that the mines of the Eureka District had not levied assessments on their shareholders. Other districts, such as the mines of the Comstock Lode at Virginia City were infamous for these demands on shareholders during times of poor returns. But the rapid digging of ore exhausted the richest part of the lode by 1885. The silver mining continued at a slower and less intense rate. The railroad had to cut back the daily service to three times a week in 1888. What had been a four hour express became a slower moving mixed train.

Repeating the experience of Virginia City, the mines encountered water and pumping began in earnest. As the mines became less profitable, they were taken over by leasors. By 1891, two of the largest mills were shut down and the structures reduced to scrap. The handwritng was on the wall.