Before Las Vegas, there was Searchlight
'Quintus Hopper of Nevada' series: Before Las Vegas even became a town, the mining town Searchlight burst into existence - before long, the southern tip of Nevada was called the Golden Triangle.
Quintus Hopper of Nevada, published in January 2022, is a historical novel that follows the epic and peculiar life of a frontier newspaper typesetter. As part of my research I made extensive use of newspaper archives and, in this series, I’ll share some of my often surprising findings. Here are history, commentaries and contemporary newspaper articles as they relate to the novel. Before the town of Las Vegas, there was the bustling mining town of Searchlight. It was a curious and mostly peaceful place, unlike most mining towns during their bonanza phases. Still, a murder might have derailed the prospects of one of the main mines and founding members of the town.
In the last article I wrote about a series of murders that took place in and around Eldorado Canyon in 1987. Something else happened in that year, something momentous that would prove of great importance for the southern tip of Nevada – the discovery of gold at a camp that would be named Searchlight. There are various versions about how Searchlight came to be named. One is that the name was chosen from the name of a box of matches.
In the novel, it is Quintus who hands one of the men the matchbox, and thus the name of the town. If you find Searchlight on a map, you’ll see that it is located in a place that’s remote and barren. Unlike many mining towns, it held on and never became a ghost town. In its glory days, Searchlight was home to one thousand five hundred people - by 1927 it had dropped to just fifty. Today the population is around five hundred and Harry Reid, former US senator, remains its most prominent citizen. He even wrote a book about it, Searchlight: The Camp That Didn’t Fail (well, he was wrong, it eventually did - but that claim was written across the masthead of the town’s first newspaper).
Back to 1897! Gold was found and, as had happened so many times before, a town was boomed into existence. For a while, Searchlight was the only town anywhere near and it grew quickly. Where most boomtowns started with chaos and lawlessness, no such thing unfolded in Searchlight. The town remained peaceful and focused on industry, as the mine shafts were sunk ever deeper into the earth. For a time, the Searchlight mines proved immensely successful, and gave the south a greater focus in a time when the Comstock Lode and many other sites in the north had long lost their luster.
George Frederick Colton was among the founding members of the Searchlight camp. Below article in the Pioche Weekly Record gives another sense of just how remote the region was at the time. Sheriff Freudenthal, residing at the far distant county seat in Pioche, is informed of murder and attempted murder by brothers Jim and Fred Colton. A week later the Record would print that the preliminary examination of Jim and Fred Colton had shown the killing of Walter Deaks to have been purely accidental. The Colton brothers were turned loose and they were free to resume work at Searchlight.
September 1, 1897
Pioche Weekly Record, Pioche
KILLING.
One man shot and killed and another’s life attempted.
Sheriff Freudenthal received a dispatch Saturday from Searchlight, a new mining camp situation in the southern portion of this county, about 30 miles south of Eldorado Canyon, and 25 miles east of Manvel the terminus of the Southern Nevada railroad, stating that a man had been killed and asking what steps should be taken in regard to the prisoner.
The Sheriff immediately telegraphed for more particulars, asking for the name of the man killed, who did the killing and also the names of the two witnesses and in reply received the following: “G. D. Bunch holds Jim Colton at Searchlight for killing Walter Deaks. Fred Colton under arrest for attempting to kill James Tadell. Witnesses Martin Conaway and Ed Foster. Signed W. G. Lovey.
Sheriff Freudenthal immediately wired G. D. Bunch, giving him full authority as Deputy Sheriff to bring Jim Colton, Fred Colton together with Conaway, Foster and Tadell as witnesses to Delamar where the preliminary examination will be held as soon as they arrive which will be about next Tuesday or Wednesday. District Attorney McNamee will conduct the examination on the part of the State.