Nye County, Nevada HISTORY
Tonopah &
Goldfield Railroad
GOLDFIELD
History Page
Goldfield grew from barren
desert to a city
of 10,000 people with no fewer than 3 railroad lines in less than 5
years. Tonopah’s boom, 1900,
preceded Goldfield’s by about 3 years. But it took until July 23,
1904
for the arrival of the first train into Tonopah – via a link to the
Carson & Colorado Railroad at a point south of Mina. That was
the
Tonopah Railroad. The actual date was
Sept. 12, 1905; the first depot was just west of the intersection of
today’s
US Highway 95 and Aluminum St. Imagine the thrill as Goldfield
Railroad engine #1, a shiny new Baldwin steam locomotive, chugged into
town from Tonopah!
Not surprisingly many of the same prime movers of that railroad soon formed a syndicate, separate from the Tonopah Railroad, to start plans for an extension to Goldfield, the two were combined into the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad in November, 1905. . |
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| T&G was a major
presence for many years in Goldfield – a depot, initially at the spot
mentioned above and later in Columbia north of the Goldfield town
limits; and a major rail facility north of Aluminum Street between
North Main and Broadway, complete with an 8-stall roundhouse,
turntable, and freight yard. And for a short time, T&G was
the
only rail service out of Goldfield. The rich strike in
Rhyolite in 1905 caused considerable enthusiasm to build a railroad to
that camp, and with Goldfield booming only 60 miles north, a link
between the two became a certainty. |
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In a
contest, Senator William Clark’s Las Vegas
& Tonopah (LV&T) railroad started building from Las Vegas to
Beatty, and later to Goldfield. John Brock’s Bullfrog Goldfield
(BG)
Railroad commenced a line from Goldfield to Beatty which paraleled the
LV&T. And meanwhile
“Borax” Smith was building his Tonopah & Tidewater (T&T) line
from Ludlow, CA to Beatty. BG won by a few months: its first
train traveled between Goldfield and Beatty in May, 1907.
LV&T’s
first train arrived in Goldfield in October of that year.
At left is a Tonopah & Tidewater Club Care |
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But as with most mining camps, not only did
Rhyolite’s
mines play out quickly, but so eventually did most of those at Tonopah
and Goldfield. And rail service to those towns was a related
casualty. LV&T ceased operations in October, 1918, but the
then
combined single route south of Goldfield (BG + LV&T) operated until
January, 1928. At that point in time, Goldfield’s rail service
reverted to a single rail link – the T&G to Tonopah. That
lasted
until October, 1947. There hasn’t been a train on steel rail in
Goldfield since then.
by Jim Price at: http://www.geocities.com/goldfieldhistoricnewsletter/railroadjimprice1.html Tonopah and Tidewater images: http://www.ttrr.org/tt_tocs.html |
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