Beautiful Mine, page 7
According to the Pueblo Chieftan, Dr. Williams’s plan was fully explained in the business prospectus she presented to investors. Of the 1,280 acres available for development, 320 were to be set aside strictly for mining coal and 960 acres were to be used for town site purchases. “Dr. Williams has valuable options upon developed coal lands which can be made income producing at once. Only one of the six quarter sections constituting the town site has been plotted as yet, but this has been laid out with a view to the development of a model city, additions to which can be made at any time.”
Stock in the mining company Dr. Williams and William Groezenger established was advertised for sale in newspapers from St. Louis to Boston. The initial $11 million in capital she raised came from a variety of investors. They were listed in the Tonopah Bonanza and referred to as “affiliated corporations. The Coaldale Mining Company invests $5 million; the Nevada Electric Power and Transmission Company, $5 million; and the St. Frances Mining and Smelting Company, $1 million.”
The prospectus—authored by Frances—offered “buy-in” opportunity for under $1,000. “To every person investing $500 in the development of these enterprises,” the proposal read, “whether becoming a resident of Coaldale or not, a lot not exceeding one-fourth of an acre in the town site together with two thousand shares of the stock of the Coal Mining Company, two thousand shares of the Electric Power Company stock, and two hundred shares of the Smelting Company’s stock will be given.” Frances promised investors that they would receive a full quarter-acre parcel in Coaldale and see a return on their investment within the first six months. She also offered “life employment to skilled artisans in any department.”
Many community leaders in Tonopah and surrounding areas objected to Frances’s aggressive fund-raising campaign and warned potential investors to be careful. William Booth, editor of the Tonopah Bonanza newspaper, felt Frances was overconfident of success and was promising too much for an untried area. Criticism of her business methods could have easily been ignored if the plan had unfolded the way she had hoped, but when the geologist hired to test the coal informed the stockholders that the black rock would not reach its fuel grade level use for a million years, Frances was branded a charlatan.
William Booth wrote a harsh column that further called into question Frances’s honesty. She sued the paper and its editor for libel and offered her side of the Coaldale events in an article in the Tonopah Miner. She admitted that she was guilty of certain “trifling errors,” but argued against the notion that the investment was a complete bust for stockholders. Although the coal find was a disappointment, the rich soil did contain gold and the ample water supply was a moneymaker as well. She reported that the Affiliated Corporations were listed in Dun and Bradstreet (a leading provider of business information) and boasted an income of $3 million a year.
Frances vigorously defended herself to anyone who challenged her in print or in person. As if to emphasize how offended she was by the accusation that she was less than honest, she began carrying a gun. She was provoked to brandish the weapon on one occasion that involved an attorney. The local authorities were called to intervene in the still unknown dispute. Frances was arrested and later released; the attorney moved to California.
In spite of the setback, Frances continued her mining pursuits. She divided her time between prospecting, caring for her now invalid husband, and maintaining a small medical practice in San Francisco. In 1906, she sold her Goldfield mining claims and used the proceeds from the sale to buy an interest in the Mohawk Mine, a major gold mine in Esmeralda County, Nevada.
Frances took on mine promoter, David Mackenzie, as her partner and the two formed a corporation called the Frances-Mohawk Mining and Leasing Company. They successfully solicited investors and immediately poured the money into developing the mine. By January 1907, the mine had yielded more than $2 million for its owners and made Frances the richest female miner in the territory.
In January 1908, Frances’s husband passed away. She returned to the mine fields of Nevada, but stayed only a short time before moving on to Death Valley. The gold strike had extended to the desert area and Frances had hoped to add another major discovery to her mining career. Now in her late sixties, the boisterous prospector journeyed through the Gold Mountain Range alone, bracing the fierce elements and hiking over treacherous precipices. She secured leases for mines near the town of Hornsilver, west of Goldfield, Nevada, organized the Frances Lime Point Mining Company, and sold blocks of stock in the venture for ten cents a share. Once again her shrewd assessment of a good mine paid off: For several weeks wagonloads of gold ore were removed from the location.
While Frances was overseeing the work at the Lime Point Mining Company she received word that another of her investments was about to make good. The Royal Flush claims that she had acquired during a visit through the Gold Mountains were reportedly “alive with gold.” She hurried back to the area, collected samples of rock from a ledge where the find originated and waited for the assayer’s office in Tonopah to provide her with the results. It was gold.
After establishing yet another corporation, this one called the Frances Gold Mountain Mining Company, she began selling stock in the business. The motive many of the financial backers had to invest in the company was that they believed Frances’s mine was really the Lost Breyfogle Ledge. Legend had it that a prospector named Charles Breyfogle found the rich outcropping in 1860, but when he stepped out of the mountains and into Death Valley, he became disoriented with thirst and heat. As a result he couldn’t recall the exact location of the find. Frances encouraged the idea that her claim was the same one Breyfogle had discovered and it produced the desired effect, increasing the sale of stock in the company and generating more revenue for mining operations.
Throughout the winter of 1908 and into the spring of 1909, Frances managed the business at the Royal Flush and Lime Point mines. With the exception of an encouraging amount of gold ore gleaned at the onset of the dig, neither mine did as well as Frances anticipated. Bank failures that hit institutions across the United States took their toll on the company’s funds and a lawsuit filed against the Frances-Mohawk Mine by a rival mining company for improper timbering placed the doctor’s shrinking income further away. Attempts by Frances’s lawyers to settle the lawsuit to avoid going to court were unsuccessful. The trial began in late March 1909 at the Goldfield Courthouse. The strain of the legal proceedings and near financial ruin left Frances despondent and tired.
On March 24, 1909, Frances suffered a massive heart attack and died. Fellow Goldfield pioneer Richard L. Colburn remembered Dr. Williams as “the most lovable woman that it has ever been my pleasure to meet.” Frances’s only living son, James, assumed control of his mother’s claims.
LILLIAN MALCOLM: PROSPECTOR IN THE SILVER PEAK MOUNTAINS
“The grandest and healthiest life known is this rough pioneer life. And I don’t see why more women are not in the hills.”
—Lillian Malcolm, 1905
Ahandsome wisp of a woman stepped out on the deck of the steamship City of Seattle and peered into the dazzling sunlight reflecting off the mountains surrounding the harbor in Dawson City, Yukon. Thirty-nine years old, Lillian Malcolm’s heart contracted with excitement and a strong sense of longing as she breathed in the clean, frigid air and watched the icy cliffs looming ahead. The spectacular scenery caused a hush to fall over the travelers aboard the ship and in the quiet the shifting, grinding, and settling of the glaciers could be heard.
As a stage actress who had recently performed in New York opposite the noted Shakespearian actor Frederick Warde, Lillian was accustomed to traveling to distant locales with impressive settings. The Yukon’s stark white views and crystal-clear waters provided her with a sight that paled in comparison to any other she had ever seen. She was confident her travels into what she referred to as the “wild and beautiful territory” would be the adventure she had always longed for.
In 1898, Lillian followed gold stampeders to the spot at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers in search of a multitude of riches. Upon her arrival she purchased a generous amount of mining supplies, food, and warm clothing, loaded the inventory onto a dogsled, and mushed her team into the range of broken, snowy peaks in the distance. Driven by a fever to find a fortune, Lillian made her way along the Chilkoot Trail, a thirty-mile journey climbing 3,500 feet.
Born in 1868 in the northeast to wealthy parents of Scottish descent, Lillian Katheryn Malcolm’s initial ambition was to become an actress. Given that women involved in that profession in 1880 were considered to have questionable morals, the Malcolms had reservations about their daughter’s intended line of work. Lillian was not swayed by disapproving attitudes; indeed, she thrived on pursuing nontraditional ways for women to make a living.
Entering the field of prospecting raised the eyebrows of the so-called proper ladies in the more civilized areas of the Yukon region. “I would notice, as I passed down the street of a mining camp, clad in my tallow-spattered Khakis,” Lillian relayed in an article for the Nevada Humboldt Star newspaper in 1905, “the wives of struggling clerks and other low-salaried men held their garments aside as though I might contaminate them.”
In addition to criticism from her own sex about her choice of employment, Lillian suffered through freezing temperatures and a rugged terrain on her way to stake out claims in Kugarak and Nome, Alaska. Her gold findings were minimal, but it was enough to spur her on to the next mine or riverbed suspected of being rich. The trek across the frozen landscape was fraught with risks. While making her way along the Bering Sea near the Gulf of Alaska in 1899, Lillian encountered fast-melting glaciers that forced her to jump from iceberg to iceberg drifting on the water.
By 1900, the actress-turned-prospector had taken up residence in a lodging house in a small mining camp in Nome. During the day she vigorously searched for gold and at the end of the long work period, she regaled other sourdoughs with tales of her northwest gold rush experiences. On numerous occasions saloon keepers and dance hall owners tried to persuade her to abandon her mining pursuits and work for them as an entertainer. Owing to the persistence of her nature and complete confidence that she would locate a rich strike, she refused.
Claim jumpers were a serious problem for miners who had staked out a section of land and were diligently working the spot. Lillian was not exempt from the land grabbers’ violent attempts to roust miners off their property. Although she carried a gun and knew how to use it, it was not enough to keep thieves from overtaking her land and driving her away. The court system in the remote areas of Alaska was corrupt and judges were given bribes to side with the criminals. In spite of her steadfast efforts, the mining claims Lillian filed remained in question and she was unable to get the property back. After more than a year of trying to overturn the matter, she abandoned the pursuit and returned to the States.
News of a silver strike in Tonopah prompted Lillian to relocate to the boomtown. With very little money and only a few changes of clothes, she managed to convince a business owner to let her stay at one of their hotels. In exchange for room and board, Lillian agreed to entertain residents with stories of her theatrical career and mining adventures. The occasional odd job helped her to earn the funds needed to invest in mining supplies and a burro. She prospected in the hills around Tonopah and nearby Goldfield, and in 1903 she worked a small section of land in the Silver Peak mountain range. The property did not yield the income she’d hoped for and by 1905 she was on the move again.
Following yet another cry of gold, Lillian hurried to a thriving mining community called Rhyolite not far from Death Valley. More than two thousand claims spanning a thirty-mile area around the town made the region attractive to Lillian. No sooner had she arrived did she agree to go into business with another miner, the founder of Rhyolite, Frank “Shorty” Harris, who possessed the same insatiable appetite for discovering major gold finds as Lillian did. He believed that the bluffs of Death Valley contained an abundance of gold and agreed to co-finance a mining expedition into the area. Lillian led the outing accompanied by three able prospectors: George Pegot, Tom McCabe, and Anthony McCauley.
Three days after setting off on the journey the explorers lost some of the pack animals carrying their provisions. A few of the burros walked off cliffs and ledges, breaking bones and their necks; others succumbed to illness and died. As a result of the misfortune, the journey had to be cut short by three months. The quartet returned to Rhyolite, but a determined Lillian quickly organized another expedition and set off again for the area where Harris suggested mining should take place.
Lillian was grateful for another chance at a possible fortune and hoped a woman’s participation in such a quest would entice other females to the field. “The higher branches of mining offer great inducements to women,” Lillian told a Nevada newspaper reporter before embarking on her second prospecting trip into Death Valley. “I don’t mean the kind of work I am doing. But there is surveying and drafting, the study of mineralogy and geology. It is clean, honest money. There is too much hypocrisy in the sexes. Women can endure as much as a man. Comply with the law and you will have man’s responsibilities and man’s reward.”
Shorty Harris teamed up with Lillian on the foray and the pair spent two months investigating the high desert. The talented miner later transformed the sight of spectacular wildflowers, snow-covered peaks, beautiful sand dunes, intermittent streams, and wildlife she encountered during her travels into spirited stories told to other prospectors and their families. Lillian and Harris scaled mountain-sides and waded through waist-high creeks, staking out claims along the way and meeting interesting characters who made their homes in the remote location.
Walter Scott, better known as Mysterious Scott, was one such character. He was a former cowboy actor turned prospector who lived under a rock outcropping in the Black Mountains. Scott was an eccentric, charismatic man who could skillfully con people out of their gold nuggets and gold claims. Lillian was unimpressed with his manner and was suspicious of his kindness. She did, however, have more than a passing interest in his mining partner, Bill Key, a soft-spoken, easygoing, half-Indian man whom she recognized as being manipulated by Mysterious Scott. He had staked a few rich claims on his own and Scott was trying to wrangle the find away from him. Lillian befriended the gullible Key and persuaded him to allow her to take out an option on his property. The agreement promised to give him a chance to work the claims himself and get out from under Scott’s control. Key agreed, and when Lillian returned to Rhyolite on January 2, 1906, she had more than her future in gold mining to think about.
With Lillian some distance from Death Valley and unable to keep Key away from Scott, the crafty miner zeroed in on his reliable but simple-minded business associate and convinced him to abandon his hunt for gold and help him kill a man. The intended victim was a mining engineer hired by east coast investors to develop the riches in the area. Scott wanted the engineer stopped and believed Key was the man for the job. For reasons that have never been revealed, the plan was thwarted.
When news of the botched crime reached Lillian along with the information that Scott was trying to frame Key for the murder attempt, she hurried to Key’s side. He was being held at the San Bernardino jail and Lillian hired the best attorney in the area to defend him. The attorney managed to persuade the court to dismiss the charges. Key was grateful for Lillian’s efforts, but he did not feel for her as she did for him. Upon his release he returned to his gold mine in Death Valley, and a brokenhearted Lillian moved back to Tonopah.
After relocating to the Nevada boomtown where she once lived, Lillian revisited her mines in the Silver Peak Range. As in 1903, the cluster of claims near Coyote Springs appeared to be the most promising. She needed capital to develop the area further and sought out funds from the Pittsburgh Mining Company operating near her property. Although the mining stocks and investments were at an all-time low, she managed to secure the bankroll needed to do the work.
“I raised the money in Pittsburgh,” she told the Tonopah Bonanza in November 1907, “and I had no trouble in doing it, which goes to show that there is a great deal of bugaboo about this talk of hard times and stringency of the money market. There is plenty of money to be had for legitimate propositions, if one is sincere in his or her motives. When one goes to businessmen, all that is necessary is to talk common sense. But if one is going to take romantic flights, and go up into millions on an ordinary proposition, he is going to fall short in his expectations.”
If Lillian’s mining venture, aptly named The Scotch Lassie Gold Mining Company, had proved to be as profitable as she had imagined, she wanted to use her earnings to create an organization to assist destitute women. Unfortunately, the mining operation was a failure or “humbug,” as miners called it. Her disappointment in the venture was short-lived and in the spring of 1907, she pressed on to yet another area rumored to possess gold.
Lillian’s next stop was the Alta Mining District, south of Nogales, Mexico. She found very little gold in the region, but refused to abandon the notion that a bonanza was within her reach. By mid-1911 she was back in Nevada again working claims in Humboldt County.
Lillian was now forty-three years old and had thirteen years of mining experience under her belt. Her looks reflected the difficult line of work she had subscribed to. A reporter for the Tonopah Bonanza wrote that she had a “refinement that the desert could not mar.” He continued in a 1907 article: “Her hair was braided and tied in numerous labor saving knots with white baby ribbon. This rather fantastic effort formed the background for a face that was once called pretty, but which has now certainly lost much of its feminine delicacy owing to the sun’s rays of Death Valley.”
