[From James G. Scrugham, Nevada: The Narrative of the Conquest of a Frontier Land (1935), vol. I, pp. 308-323]

XIII

GOVERNOR KINKEAD'S TERM, 1879-1882

The election of 1878 brought a new governor to take the place of L. R. Bradley, whose administration must always entitle him to a high place in Nevada history and who undoubtedly deserved most of the tributes paid his uncompromising honesty and vigor in public affairs. Throughout the nation the independent vote had grown amazingly, the chief result of which was defection from the strength of the regular Republicans and a building up of third party organizations, which in various instances through fusion brought success to the Democratic ticket. From 1876 to 1880 the independent or third party vote increased from approximately 82,000 to more than a million. The chief reasons assigned for this were the effects of the general business depression setting in after the panic of 1873, the political turmoil occasioned by the Hayes-Tilden contested election of 1876, and the labor and money issues. The national greenback party reached its greatest strength in local and state elections in 1878, when fourteen greenbackers were chosen to seats in the Lower House of Congress. State conventions of all parties both east and west showed a disposition to discard the Civil war issues and at least notice the new popular demands for or against the contraction of the currency, for the rights of labor, against Chinese immigration, for regulation of the railroads and other monopolistic corporations.

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John Henry Kinkead, the third governor of the state, brought to this office a diversified experience in both public affairs and business. He had been a member of both constitutional conventions of Nevada and was the territorial treasurer under Governor

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Nye. He was born in Pennsylvania December 10, 1826, grew up and attended school in Ohio and in 1849, after some training in a wholesale house at Saint Louis crossed the plains to Salt Lake City, where he became member of a pioneer mercantile firm. In 1854 he removed to California. He and his partners carried on an extended business in the buying, selling and grazing of live stock, and later he became connected with a mercantile company at

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MT. ROSE NEAR RENO

Railroad Taxation

Among the various problems that were presented to the Kinkead administration for solution, that of taxing and regulating the railroads early came to the fore. In his inaugural address the governor recognized this :

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Grave, and I believe well grounded, complaint is made concerning the valuation of railroad property for taxation. The owners of this species of property are granted exceptional privileges, and should be made to bear their equal part of all the expenses of government. There is no reason for discrimination in their favor. Common justice demands the taxation of railroads upon the same basis of valuation as other property; that is to say, their actual value in cash. . . .

The people, with great unanimity and emphasis, regardless of party, have recently expressed their disapproval of the discrimination in fares and freights made against them by the Central Pacific Railroad Company. This grievous burden, so long and patiently endured by our people, should be speedily lightened by the enactment of laws to prevent and punish extortion and discrimination, and by the adoption of a schedule of rates at once fair to the company and just to our citizens.

At that time the county assessors and county boards of equalization fixed the valuation of property within their respective limits, and from their decision there was no recourse except to the courts. There was no state board of equalization, though the creation of such a board was shown imperative by the state controller in 1874 and a recommendation for its creation had appeared in Governor Bradley's messages of 1875 and 1877. Governor Kinkead in 1881 called attention to some of the incongruous results of the valuations set by the county boards on the main track of the Central Pacific. That portion of this road in Elko, Churchill, Humboldt counties was assessed at $6,000 a mile; in Washoe and Eureka counties, $9,000 a mile, and Lander County $12,000 a mile. There was no good reason, said the governor, why this railroad property should be valued for taxable purposes at different rates per mile in different localities, particularly such a glaring inequity as taxing a mile in Lander County at $12,000, and the adjoining mile in Humboldt County at only $6,000. It was shown that the average assessed valuation per mile in Nevada was much lower than in California. The only remedy for this situation, in the opinion of the governor, was the creation of a state board of equalization. "Bills for the creation of such a board," said the governor, "have been introduced in preceding legislatures, but meeting with strenuous opposition from railroad corporations, failed of passage. I earnestly recommend the enactment of some measure that will comply with the provisions of the state constitution, which declares that ‘a uniform and equal rate of assessment and taxation' shall be provided by law." At the close of his term the governor again demanded a state board of equalization, and stated that both political parties in 1882 had pledged their nominees to favor such a law. The Senate in 1883 did pass such a bill, but it was lost in the House. Apparently the railroad companies preferred dealing with the county boards, even with their disparity of valuations, rather than to deal with a state board with authority to fix an equitable rate of valuation throughout the state. By its arbitrary power of fixing tariffs, the railroad could chastise a county which used its tax levying powers too freely. Thus it was reported that Washoe County had compelled the Central Pacific to pay $45,000 in taxes, and within ten days the freight rates between local stations in the county had been raised to a point whereby the railroad

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"had squeezed $2,500,000 out of the people of Nevada in revenge for having been forced to pay that $45,000."

Rate Discriminations

The whole nation was stirred up in 1879 by the discussions and disclosures in legislative bodies, in Congress and in the press over the evils of unjust rates and railway favoritism. The Hepburn Committee of the New York Legislature made public in 1879 a report that has been famous as one of the most enlightening contributions to the subject of railway discriminations. These investigations in the East disclosed one of the chief sources of secret power wielded in the development of the Standard Oil Company and other corporations tending toward monopoly.

            Consequently, in taking up the subject of regulating fares and freights on railroads, the ninth session of the Nevada Legislature in 1879 was not without the benefit of outside light and guidance though there was no dearth of evidence within the borders of the state on which to base action. Early in the session a select committee of fourteen was appointed from both Houses to consider proposed measures for adjusting rates and fares on the railways within the state. Before this committee made a formal report the governor gave his approval on February 12 to "an act to prevent discrimination in fares and freights by railroad companies whose railroads run through the state of Nevada, or by railroad companies, the terminus or termini of whose railroads are within the state of Nevada." This was not a rate-fixing act, but merely one to prevent a railroad company from discriminating in its charges or in charging more for a short than a long haul. While violation of the provisions of the act constituted a misdemeanor, subject to a fine of $2,000, the shipper could obtain award of damages only by recourse to suit in a district court. Two other bills were introduced into the same Legislature prescribing schedule of rates on railroads entirely within the state, but the majority of the select committee believed that the rates named in the bill would prevent the construction of railroads already projected. "The population of the state of Nevada is well known to be migratory; certain localities are suddenly settled, and often quite as promptly de-populated. Therefore, inducements rather than impediments should be offered by the Legislature to associations of capital ready to venture the development of the mineral resources of our state by the construction of new railroads."

This session of the Legislature also adopted a memorial and resolution to Congress on the subject of "the exactions, extortions and discriminations imposed upon the people and industries of this state by the Central Pacific Railroad Company," and instructing Nevada's representatives at Washington to use their utmost endeavors to promote the enactment of a national law for the regulation of interstate railroads, mentioning in particular the bill then pending before the Senate which had been introduced by Senator John H. Reagan of Texas.

Cheap and ample transportation, particularly in the form of narrow gauge railroads, would solve the problem of the development of the resources of the state and enable the farmers, stock raisers and miners to put in market their productions, declared Governor Kinkead in 1881. He believed that every proper encouragement should be given to capital and enterprise to extend

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railroad construction, but at the same time he affirmed the doctrine that the state had control over its public domain and its highways and could protect its people from extortion by companies to whom it granted charters. He was also opposed to railroad subsidies. While urging the enactment of a firm and just policy towards railroads, the governor felt it his duty to call the attention of the Legislature to the "constantly increasing cry of our people for some relief from the heavy burdens imposed upon them by the Central Pacific Railroad in the matter of freights and fares. In every state of the Union, excepting alone our state, concessions and reductions in prices of transportation, et cetera, have been made. We are the only exception, and that, too, in the face of a large and continuous increase in the traffic of the road through our state."

No railroad legislation of importance was enacted in this session. The committee on corporations and railroads of the Assembly made an investigation of the several railroads within the state and reported that no complaints had been made as to overcharges or discrimination. But the Central Pacific came in for a scathing denunciation in a resolution to Congress passed February 10, 1881. This railroad company, to quote the resolution, "exercises over the persons and property of others an almost absolute power, vicious and tyrannical, destructive of the rights of persons and of property, and opposed to common justice, as well as to every principle of civil and constitutional liberty known since the days of Magna Charta."

The resolution goes into specific instances which may be allowed to stand in the records of history as illustrating the arbitrary control then exercised by railroad companies and the source of the protests which here and in other states led, a few years later, to the enactment of the Interstate Commerce Law.

The people of Palisade, distant 435 miles east from Sacramento, have to pay for freight on flour (fourth-class freight per published special rate tariff of Central Pacific Railroad), per car load, the sum of $282 from Sacramento, while the people of Toano, 129 miles further east, pay freight on flour, per car load, according to the printed special rate, the sum of $275 per car load; while the merchant having a contract for some so-called competitive point with this railroad company pays freight on the same article, to wit: flour per car load, only $200. The merchant of Toano, having a special contract, pays eighty-two dollars per car load less freight than the merchant at Palisade, although, as before mentioned, the carriage is 129 miles more. The goods delivered at Palisade or Battle Mountain, distant respectively 435 and 383 miles from Sacramento, having a freight charge of $480 per car load, while at Toano the freight amounts to $275 per car load to persons having special contract rates for so-called competitive points, the greater service being performed for the less amount. Persons shipping wool or other products from Palisade, Battle Mountain, Elko, or other points in this State to the Eastern States, have to pay local rates to Sacramento, thence freight at through rates back over the same road to the point of destination, the shipper being often compelled to pay freight at local rates for a distance of over 500 miles, a

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"The discriminations of the Central Pacific Railroad Company against Nevada continue unchanged and unabated," said Governor Kinkead when he went out of office. To many other complaints he added a new charge. When the Central and Union Pacific railroads were completed in 1869 they had fulfilled the conditions necessary to the acquisition of the grants of the alternate sections on each side of the right-of-way.  This land grant to the Central Pacific alone aggregated about 8,000,000 acres, a large portion of which, of course, lay within Nevada. The railroad lands could not be patented until the United States surveys had been completed, and in Nevada more of the government survey work had been done during 1881-82, as the report of the state surveyor general showed, to the extent of ten times the number of townships in any similar period before. Nevertheless, the Central Pacific had secured patents to less than one-eighth of the total lands contained in its grants. As long as the land was not patented to the company, it could not be taxed by the state or any of its local subdivisions. As a result, a large number of the railroad sections were not taxable, while adjoining sections that had passed into private ownership had to bear a greater proportion of the burdens of contributing to the support of the state and local governments.

Narrow Gauge Lines

During the Kinkead administration two new narrow gauge railroad lines were put under construction. One was the Nevada

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and Oregon Railroad, construction on which commenced December 22, 1880, at Reno. By the close of 1882 it had been extended across the California line a distance of over thirty miles toward its proposed objective at the north end of Goose Lake in Oregon. The Carson and Colorado Railroad, organized in 1880, was started at the Mound House on the Virginia and Truckee, and in April, 1881, was completed a distance of a hundred miles to Hawthorne, along the Carson and Walker rivers to a point beyond Walker Lake. The first objective was the Colorado River, but later its course was turned toward the California line, and at the close of 1882 it had been constructed nearly 200 miles, passing through some of the noted mining districts of Esmeralda County.

Retrenchment

"Resumption of specie payments" had become a fact before Governor Kinkead was inaugurated. This meant that ten dollars in greenbacks was worth ten dollars in gold. A transaction in the state treasurer's report for 1876 shows that $4,000 of currency was sold for $3,660 in coin, the discount on currency at that time being $340 or nearly 9 per cent. But in 1878, $56,000 of currency was exchanged for $56,000 in coin, and from that time currency was readily convertible into coin on a par basis. After 1878 the state treasurer no longer allotted separate columns to exhibit the coin and currency divisions of the public funds.

While a great many business men and political leaders hailed this condition as an evidence of "financial stability," the date of resumption did not mark the beginning of a revival of business and enterprise and a rising level of general prosperity. As the studies of able economists have shown, the "deflation" which set in at the end of the Civil war did not stop in 1879, but continued to dominate American trade and industry until 1896.

In Nevada retrenchment was a necessity throughout the Kinkead administration. With a big surplus in the treasury the Legislature in 1879 had reduced the state tax levy from ninety cents to fifty-five cents on the hundred dollars. The state tax on the proceeds of mines in 1877 yielded $300,000 and nearly $200,000 in 1878, but in 1879 its yield was approximately $35,000, $27,000 in 1880, and $15,000 in 1881. The vast decrease in the bullion products of the state was accompanied by a general depreciation of property values, real and personal, so that in 1880 the receipts from the tax on real and personal property amounted to about $125,000, a little more than half of the receipts from the same sources in 1878. "While the people have had the benefit for two years of a very low rate of taxation for state purposes," said Governor Kinkead in 1881, "the consequence is, that at the end of your session the surplus which had accumulated during prior years of high taxation and, much greater valuation, together with the receipts of the past two years, will have been practically exhausted, and the treasury be without means of paying current expenses during the present year." Under these circumstances the Legislature in 1881 restored the state tax of ninety cents on the hundred dollars.

Territorial Debt

One important transaction of the Kinkead administration was the permanent funding of the territorial debt. In 1879 this debt was represented in outstanding bonds to the amount of $380,000,

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bearing 9½ per cent interest per annum and due in 1887. A plan of refunding this debt had been proposed by the 1877 Legislature, which authorized the application of the assets in the territorial interest and sinking fund, together with portions of the state school fund and an appropriation from the general fund, but the holders of the bonds had refused to accept the terms authorized by the Legislature. The 1879 Legislature amended this previous act, providing that on condition that the entire issue of $380,000 could be obtained the purchase would be consummated at such a rate of premium as would guarantee to the former holders of the bonds 4½ per cent per annum interest for the remaining life of the bonds so purchased. When the bonds had been purchased they were to be surrendered to the state treasurer for cancellation. Then a bond to the amount of $380,000, not redeemable or transferable, and bearing interest at the rate of 5 per cent per annum, was to be issued to the state school fund of Nevada. The bond "shall state in substance that the state of Nevada owes to its state school fund $380,000, the interest on which fund at the rate of 5 per cent per annum she agrees to pay for all time for the benefit of the common schools of the state." Under the authority of this act, said Governor Kinkead in 1881, "all the outstanding territorial bonds have been redeemed and cancelled, and there is in the state school fund the $380,000 irredeemable 5 per cent bond authorized to be issued in lieu thereof." When the purchase was consummated April 1, 1879, the territorial interest and sinking fund contained $175,000. The sum of $325,000 in United States bonds and money was taken from the state school fund. The cost of the entire transaction was $491,627.16. The ad valorem tax of eight cents on the hundred dollars which had been previously collected for the benefit of the territorial interest and sinking fund was now continued to supply revenue for the payment of the state's permanent obligation to its school fund.

School Lands

The assets in the state school fund by 1882 amounted to over $600,000, so that from the interest on securities and the interest on preferred school land payments the state had nearly $35,000 annually to distribute for the benefit of the common schools, in addition to the revenue from taxation. One of the oldest grants from the United States to the individual states for the benefit of education was that appropriating the sixteenth and thirty-sixth section in each township. Nevada's quota under this allotment approximated nearly four million acres. Prior to June 16, 1880, less than 62,000 acres, or about 1½ per cent of the total, had been sold in the sixteen years since statehood. In many states this arbitrary designation of certain sections resulted in no important loss to the educational fund, but in Nevada hundreds of these sections were so located as to be comparatively worthless for all time. Through the efforts of Senator Jones, Congressman Daggett and the Nevada land agent, Capt. John Mullan, Congress passed a law of June 16, 1880, accepting the surrender to the United States of all unsold portions of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections and in lieu thereof granting to the state two million acres to be selected from any unappropriated non-mineral public land within the state's borders. Thus instead of valueless sections embracing rugged mountain ranges, lakes and deserts, it became possible to select

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choice portions of the public lands wherever available. Within two years after this two million acre grant was confirmed, Nevada sold more than 180,000 acres from the grant, as compared with a little more than 60,000 acres under the old sixteenth and thirty-sixth section grant during the preceding sixteen years. Governor Kinkead thought that with the increasing revenues from these land sales to build up the state school fund it would be a matter of only a few years until the taxpayers would be relieved of contributing to the support of the common schools.

University

While the school revenues were growing and new school houses were springing up in every part of the state and better educational facilities offered to the pupils, Governor Kinkead and other state officials entertained serious doubt as to the wisdom of trying to support a university. A joint committee of the Tenth Legislature (1881) reported that the proceeds from the two land grants for the university and mining school had accumulated a principal fund of about $71,500, and interest amounting to nearly $14,000. None of this so far had been expended for the school at Elko. "Of the usefulness of the school little can be said commendatory," was the opinion of the committee. "With an average daily attendance of twenty-four pupils, all but one or two are from Elko and vicinity, giving it more the character of a local school than a state institution, it does not seem probable that a state university can ever be nurtured into useful existence at the point selected, nor is it probable that the most favorable location and circumstances would prove sufficient to warrant an effort to establish a university in this state."

But if the school was abandoned, the state would be obligated to the federal government to restore the lands and the proceeds of the sales thereof. The committee therefore recommended that the land grant for the university and mining school and the proceeds already derived therefrom should be transferred to the common school land grant and fund. In this way the state would be relieved of the "unreasonable expense of the university," but until such an arrangement could be confirmed by Congress the commit-tee suggested that a "technical compliance with the act of Congress can be made by employing an assayer to give lessons to the pupils in assaying and mining." As a matter of fact such an expedient was adopted when in October, 1882, J. E. Gignoux was employed as instructor in assaying and mining engineering for a term of three months. "Nine pupils, who were nearly all prospectors from different parts of the state, attended the course of instruction."

The problem of caring for the indigent insane without sending them beyond the borders of the state was answered by the act of the Legislature of February 24, 1881, providing for the erection and equipment of a state insane asylum at Reno. The sum of $80,000 was appropriated for that purpose, the building was erected, and on July 1, 1882, a special train removed 148 patients from the asylum at Stockton, California, to their new home.

While this resulted in a new institution in the state, it was not a new function of service for the state government. The same was true of the newly established state printing office. Public printing in the first year of the state government had cost more than the judicial department and nearly as much as the support of the state

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prison, and it was not until 1871 that the appropriations for charitable purposes exceeded that for printing. The office of state printer had been created in 1865, but the 1877 Legislature abolished the office and determined to contract the public printing out. In 1879 the Legislature established the office of superintendent of state printing, and appropriated $10,000 to establish a state printing office. Thus while the statutes of 1879 were printed in San Francisco, those for 1881 were issued from the state printing office at Carson City.

Constitutional Amendments

During the Kinkead administration there was a great deal of discussion about amending the constitution and even of calling a constitutional convention to make over the organic law completely. Among other subjects covered by these proposals was that of woman suffrage. A joint committee to whom was referred the matter of preparing an amendment to the constitution submitted such an amendment on March 3, 1881, and declared that its adoption was eminently just. "We believe that there is today no sufficient reason why the rights and responsibilities of the ballot should be longer withheld from the women of the land." But the resolution to submit such an amendment was lost in the Senate by a vote of eleven to thirteen.

Two successive legislatures of 1879 and 1881 had approved an amendment proposal by which the biennial session of the Legislature should begin in February instead of January. This was a reform that had been advocated chiefly in order that the reports of state officials might be submitted to the governor at the close of the fiscal year, December 31, so as to give him time to study them and incorporate their findings in his message to the Legislature. But this amendment did not go before the people for ratification because the Legislature had made no provision for its submission. On the general question of a constitutional convention Governor Kinkead, in his message at the close of his term, counseled some less expensive method, since all the essential objects could be accomplished either by individual amendment or by legislation. "Much of the reform demanded in the matter of reducing the expenses of the state and county government can be effected by legislation, while the still more important changes in respect of revenue can be as well accomplished by amendments to the constitution as by a revision of that instrument."

Mining

A partial picture of the economic resources of the state during the Kinkead administration is presented in the report of the surveyor general for the years 1881-82. He called attention to the fact that with the decline of the Comstock activities, the center of the stage in mining had been occupied by the Eureka district. Prior to 1869 scarcely a hundred white men lived in the region afterwards blocked out as Eureka County. Then in 1869 the Ruby Hill mines were discovered and four years later Eureka County was organized. In the 1880 census Eureka County had a population of 7,086, but by 1890 it had declined to less than half that number. Thus by 1880 the county was practically at the climax of its development. The Eureka and Palisade Narrow Gauge Railroad had been built primarily to afford transportation to the mines and

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smelters for the production of gold, silver and lead, most of the silver appearing in combination with lead. The surveyor general reported that he had reliable information that two mines in the district, the Eureka Consolidated and the Richmond Consolidated had alone paid more dividends to their stockholders than all the mines of Colorado combined, and had declared more in dividends than all the mines of Utah, Arizona and Dakota.

Up to that time silver and gold ores had been practically the only ones that could pay the cost of reduction, but with improved transportation facilities it seemed probable that commercial use would be made of some of the other resources of Nevada's deserts. The surveyor general claimed that the primary object of the construction of the Carson and Colorado Narrow Gauge Road was for the purpose of developing the salt and borax deposits in Esmeralda

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A MODERN HERD OF CATTLE

County. He spoke of the recent discoveries by Walter Schmitt of the nitrate of soda deposits on the Humboldt desert near Brown's Station on the Central Pacific.

Charcoal Burners War

For the smelting of Nevada's ores, fuel was a first consideration. The use of coke in blast furnaces is comparatively a recent development in the history of the technique of ore reduction. In all the years the Comstock was in its glory, charcoal was the indispensable fuel. Charcoal burning was an industry hardly second to that of getting out timbers for the mines. Members of earlier generations of many well known families in Nevada today had something to do with getting out wood for the charcoal kilns or with the actual burning operations. In the mountainous districts of Southern Europe, charcoal burning has been a traditional occupation for some families for centuries. It was natural that the production of charcoal in Nevada would attract newcomers from that section of Europe, including Swiss and Italians. Some of the families of Italian de-scent in Nevada were charcoal burners, both in the old country and in their early years in this state.

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A controversy in Eureka County during the Kinkead administration—in some measure a local symptom of the widespread industrial unrest and anti-alien prejudice noted previously—was called variously the charcoal burners war, the "Fish Creek" war, and also the "Italian" war because most of the participant workers were of that race.

The best material for charcoal was the nut pine which grew in abundance on the mountain slopes around the newly developed "strikes" in Eureka County. Camps were established in many places for cutting and burning the pine. It was estimated that the production in 1884, when the mining boom was past its peak, was 165,000 bushels in this county. Up to 1879 the prevailing price paid at the smelters was thirty cents a bushel. In that year the superintendents at Eureka announced they would pay only twenty-seven cents. The price reduction was only one of the grievances held by the burners. It was claimed that the managers manipulated the methods of measurement so that one way or another the producers got the bad end of the bargain.

The new price schedule provoked the "war." The Charcoal Burners Association refused to deliver to the smelters. Not only did the smelters shut down, but for a time the town of Eureka was in possession by the strikers, who bade defiance to the owners and operators. Apprised by telegraph of the situation Governor Kinkead ordered a part of the Second Brigade of State Militia to the scene. The climax of the hostilities came August 18, 1879, when deputy sheriff J. B. Simpson attempted to arrest some persons belonging to a coal burning camp at Fish Creek, thirty miles from Eureka. In resisting arrest, five burners were killed and six wounded. A coroner's jury subsequently brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide, but a general conviction remained that the burners were the victims of industrial injustice.

Agriculture and Stock Raising

But important as mining had always been in the industrial development of the state, it was in his opinion "an open question whether mining or stock raising produces the greater income." Mining was the prop that supported all the early agriculture and stock raising of Nevada. The earliest Mormon settlements were agricultural in character, but it will be recalled that Reese at his ranch at Genoa had a keen eye for business in supplying, first, the overland immigrants and later the mine workers in Gold Canyon with fresh products from the soil. The Carson and Washoe valleys produced great quantities of hay, grain, butter and meat to supply the hives of industry growing up around the Comstock. The opening of every new mining district afforded an opportunity for men to cut the wild hay and graze herds of cattle to supplement the quantities of food stuff that had to be transported from a distance.

By this process agriculture and stock raising took root in Nevada and often when the mining district played out, the stock raiser remained. Thus during the brief excitement which swept over White Pine County during the '70s there were men who discovered the productiveness of the Steptoe, Spring and White Pine valleys and the excellent grazing grounds for stock, and when the Cherry Creek and Treasure Hill and other mines suspended a nucleus of population remained to carry on a pioneer program of raising grain and hay and grazing cattle and sheep over the hills.

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            Similarly, prospectors had scoured every promising prospect throughout Humboldt County, but nowhere had discovered more enduring wealth than the splendid agricultural lands of Paradise Valley. The migration to the Tuscarora and Cornucopia mining districts of Elko County in 1877-78 was accompanied by a similar movement of farmers and stock men into the agricultural regions along the upper Humboldt and the Owyhee. The state mineralogist was inclined to put emphasis on the production of wheat, oats, barley, potatoes and live stock as of almost equal rank with the out-put of minerals. In Lincoln County the climax of bullion production had come in 1874, but in subsequent years the agricultural interests proportionately advanced.

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SHEEP

Part of One of Nevada's Fine Flocks

Any disturbance of the industrial equilibrium, such as the tremendous falling off in bullion production after 1879, is accompanied by a shifting to new fields of economic activity. A great many whose temperament and training fitted them solely for mining left the state altogether to follow fortune in other fields. Others turned to the less profitable but more stable occupation connected with making a living from the surface of the soil. In the meanwhile the era of the open range stock industry was approaching its climax. The cattlemen and their herds had followed the retreating Indian and the buffalo into all the grass covered valleys of the Rocky Mountain slope and even beyond the Great Divide and into the Great Basin. The first wealth the far West contributed to the world was in furs. Then followed the exploitation of its mineral resources and the grazing of live stock. Nevada began to share in this later economic phase just about the time the Comstock fortunes waned. To quote from the report of the surveyor general for 1881-82: "Within the last two years there has been a decided advance in the stock growing interest, owing to the higher prices of meat which are obtained throughout the country. Cattle and sheep are now shipped out of the state, both east and west, and to the best of my knowledge more are shipped west than east. The

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San Francisco market seems to be the favorite with our stock raisers. Several of our Nevada stock raisers have herds in different parts of the state. Several of our Nevada stock raisers have tried the ranges of Eastern Oregon and Idaho, but Nevada has greatly the advantage over her northern neighbors as a stock raising country, on account of her climate, which is less rigorous than in the higher latitudes during the winter and early spring, when the young stock usually makes its first appearance."

Irrigation

In Nevada the practice of irrigation is as old as agriculture itself. While the Spaniards were the first builders of irrigation works in the Southwest, it was not from New Mexico or Southern California, but from the Salt Lake Valley that the practice of irrigation was extended to Nevada. The Mormon pioneer in 1847 instituted the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon irrigation in this country. The first agricultural settlers of Nevada were Mormons, and they brought with them at least a practical knowledge of the art of turning waters from the running streams on to the fields. Other attempts at agriculture outside the Salt Lake Valley had been made by the settlers around the stations of the overland trail. By means of simple furrows they had turned water upon the bottom lands. The use of water other than rainfall for growing crops was undoubtedly stimulated with the introduction of alfalfa as a forage crop. The primary object in taking water out of lakes or running streams was to divert it to the mines and mills, rather than to water growing crops. Reference has been made to early franchises granted by the Nevada legislatures to companies for the construction of ditches and canals for industrial and "irrigation" purposes.

In Nevada the legal recognition of irrigation began in 1866. To quote the words of the master mind of western reclamation work, Elwood Mead, "the law of that year requires any party desiring to construct a ditch or flume to record, in the county in which the

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One proposed method at that time for increasing the water supply was the sinking of artesian wells. The 1879 Legislature passed an act to encourage the sinking of such wells and offering a subsidy in order to carry on the drilling beyond a depth of 500 feet. The same Legislature passed a resolution petitioning Congress to donate lands from the public domain to any one who would successfully "cause water sufficient for practical agricultural or cattle grazing purposes to flow upon the surface of the arable lands." A similar request to Congress regarding artesian wells was made by the 1881 Legislature, which also directed a memorial to Congress asking an appropriation for the improvement of the navigation of the Colorado River between Fort Yuma and Callville, though there was no intimation at that time of turning the waters of this stream to irrigation uses. However, these acts and proposals indicate that the subject of reclamation was beginning to attract attention in Nevada.