Silver Tailings: Gold Hill County

This series was written as a part of a advertizing campaign that Paul Stewart and I dreamed up for KONE Country. Unfortunately it never got beyond this stage as the format changed from Country to American Standard music.

We had intended them to be voiced-over by Norm Nielson, who had some fame as one of the writers for the TV show, “Bonanza.” He went of to create his own radio vignette called, “Tales of Nevada,” and writing two books bearing the same name.

Sadly, both Paul and Norm are no longer with us today. I’ve decided to rename the series “Silver Tailings,” which hopefully one day I’ll turn into a book or two.

In November 1864, it was proposed that Gold Hill be permanently separated from Virginia City, which had been urging consolidation of the adjacent town for a year. Gold Hill would be the seat of a new county that would include American Flat and some of the mountains between Gold Hill and Washoe Valley.

The proposal was made because of the indebtedness of Virginia City and Storey County, over $200,000 and $300,000, respectively. The citizens of Gold Hill claimed they had no part in running up the debt, but were being asked to help repay it.

Nevada’s State Legislature, which met for its very first session on December 11, 1864, ignored the proposal. They probably felt that the residents of Gold Hill had received more gain from the debt than they admitted to.

However, the idea of splitting Nevada counties into smaller units gained a foothold and was not forgotten. Over the next 55 years, the original nine counties became the seventeen of today.