| Show 1111 lei lei lei lot lei IN lot lei lei lel 14 oil lei lei lei 14 1 IN kol 1 1411 im lot 2 FH how 0 jim butler discovered tonopah To 0 0 E discovery of tonopah was an accident 0 the man who met with this accident r was james L t butler little did he think at the time that he walked over the now famous mizpah ledge that misname bis his name had thereby become securely linked with an event which nevada historians will record a as s being one of the most important in the existence of the sage brush state it must not be understood that when the statement is made that the finding of the mizpah ledge was accidental that jim butler as he is familiarly called was not a miner or prospector he had spent nearly all his life in the hills of nevada prospecting much of the time butler and his estimable wife lived on a ranch near belmont the county seat of nye county while he was not engaged 0 on n the ranch he was invariably ou out in the mountains somewhere trying to find a mine and mrs butler was generally with him early in 1900 quite a stir was manifested in the klondyke district located in the southern part of nye county mr butler heard of this and in may of that year started out to investigate it he left home with a train of buros and all the necessary supplies for the trip on the way over he camped at a point near what is now known know n as mt oddle oddie just to the northeast of the present location of the town of tonopah To while he was in campmany camp may 19 the buros which he had with bhim him on the trip strayed away from camp he struck across the base of the mountain in search of them and while doing so observed that the mountain appeared to be mineralized and as he went along he kept his eyes open for droppings crop pings presently he ran across a reef of rock which carried indications of v values al I 1 so some pieces were broken off of it and he put them in his pocket outward appearances did not speak favorably of the samples thus acquired but mr butler thought he would get them assayed anyway upon arriving at klondyke he gave a piece of the rock to an assayer by the name of frank higgs biggs the latter placed it on a window sill pad and in a few weeks cast it aside as worthless without even attempting to assay it butler had bad no money to pay for the assay then so 7 biggs m s it is said wasn gasn t going to take any chances after completing his observations atklin dyke butler returned to belmont going by aay ay of the place where he had picked up the samples game days before the th thought seemed to strike him very very forcibly that the reek was better than it booked looked so he came back for more samples he procured them on oa the and of may mav these he took with him to belmont where whee he gave them to T L oddle oddie then a resident of the place but now manager of the tonopah cos mines mr oddle oddie sent a portion of them to austin to be assayed the results were not known until about a month later they were astonishing carrying values of about 1600 ounces silver with heavy values in gold butler then decided to locate the mines and set out from home early in august for that purpose mrs butler went with him this time arriving on 4 5 7 J L 21 V cerer of tonopah and father of the camp the ground after a hard journey across the desert on august 26 five days were consumed in doing this work all the corner monuments were built of ore some of which have since been torn down and shipped to the smelters shelters sm elters in the meantime the news of the discovery reached klondyke and assayer A assayer higgs hunted up the rock he had thrown away made a test with results similar to those found at austin the excitement over the discovery became intense and several set out to find the new eldorado for the purpose of locating the country ahead of butler some of the party came within a few miles of tb the e place once but moved on tha opposite side of mt oddie by this time mr and mrs butler were on the grounds and before their whereabouts became known they had made their locations they returned to their home in belmont on september 1 on october ath 4 r 3 ILI ni residence of T L oddie Ma manager malaer tonopah co next they again returned to camp accod danied by T L oddle oddie and W brougher who wha were given an interest in the claims located by mr butler characteristic of his big heartedness he ave aade others around him an interest in his claims |
