History
Austin was founded in 1862, as part of a silver rush reputedly triggered by a Pony Express rider, William Talcott whose horse kicked over a rock. By summer 1863, Austin and the surrounding Reese River Mining District had a population of over 10,000, and it became the county seat of Lander County. In 1871 the Manhattan Silver Mining Company had consolidated most of the claims. The company grew to have a lot of influence in the area and its secretary M..J. Farrell was the state senator for Lander County. Farrell set out to fix the lack of a railroad with a controversial project, approved only after a bitter debate in the 1874 legislature, overriding the Governor’s veto. The legislature authorized Lander County in 1875 to grant a $200,000 of its bonds as a subsidy to build a railroad, a time limit of five years was set to finish the project. The Nevada Central Railroad wasn’t even started until 4 ½ years later, Anson Phelps Stokes the grandson of the founder of the Phelps Dodge Corporation and a partner in the mining company came to town. With Stokes involved he brought in General James H. Ledlie, a former Union officer in the Civil War. The crews went to work desperately, only to bring the line within 2 miles (3.2 km) of the Austin town limits with less than a day left before the deadline. An emergency meeting of the Austin Town Board extended the town limits by two miles and the last rails were laid just minutes before the deadline. The line from Battle Mountain to Austin was 92 miles (148 km). Nevada Central was only profitable as long as the mines at Austin were operating at full capacity. By the middle 1930's most of the mines that generated traffic at Battle Mountain were shut down and boarded up and the NCRR had passed into receivership for the last time in 1938.
Read more about this topic: Nevada Central Railroad
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)