First Discovery: December 25, 1906
Regent Mining District - Mineral County, Nevada

• Start of mining boom: August 1907
• Height of mining boom: April - August 1908
• Cessation of mining boom: September 1908
• Rawhide's Big Fire: September 4, 1908
• Peak population: 7,000 as of March - June 1908
• Post Office: October 1907 - August 1941

Newspapers

• Rawhide Daily Press: Feb 1, 1908 - Apr 1, 1908
• Rawhide Press-Times: Apr 1, 1908 - Jan 20, 1911
• Rawhide Rustler: Oct 31, 1907 - 1909
• Rawhide News: Aug 1, 1908 - 1910

Celebrity Adornment

• Tex Rickard: Before going on to big-time prize fighting promotion and founding New York City's original Madison Square Garden, Tex came to Rawhide from Goldfield on his last nickels to build his Northern Saloon here. The Northern became so huge it took hundreds of people to run it. Tex owned the finest house in Rawhide, which would ultimately become occupied by Anna Rechel and her family over a decade after Tex's departure. More...

  

• Elinor Glyn: Ms. Glyn, a famous British novelist, visited Rawhide in 1908 for inspiration and to get a feel for true Western town living. Her hosts were smart, ambitious men who liked to promote their mines. The result was an episode, complete with a Wild West gunfight, in which the "press-agenting" of the Rawhide boosters helped their young town gain considerable notoriety. Glyn was the Danielle Steele and Barbara Cartland of her time. Her racy books--The Visits of Elizabeth, The Damsel and the Sage--were immensely popular at home in Britain and in the United States. A contemporary doggerel began, "Would you sin with Elinor Glyn?" More...

  

The Rawhide Western Railroad

A big attempt to establish rail line to Rawhide was never successful. It would have connected the camp of Rawhide to the nearby Nevada-California Railroad junction at Schurz. Incorporated under the laws of West Virginia on Feb. 27, 1908, railroad officials named Fred Grutt president. Renfro assumed the position of general manager and announced to the press that $30,000 had already been raised toward construction costs and that he expected trains to be running within 90 days. The line was to stretch from the Southern Pacific railhead at Schurz -- 28 miles to the west. He had assurances of sufficient shipping-grade ore to justify the construction of the line, Renfro said, and Southern Pacific officials were planning to make a site available near Walker Lake for a smelter.

Grading continued apace despite an effort by San Francisco stock brokers to depress the market in Rawhide mining stocks as well as continual turnovers in the labor force. Town boosters had hoped to celebrate Railroad Day on July 4, but decided to shoot for Labor Day, Sept. 7, 1908 when delays piled up. To speed the work, Renfro brought in 300 Greek laborers in mid-August. With less than three miles of grading to go, prospects for a fall opening looked good, but a disastrous fire in Rawhide on Sept. 4, 1908 put the project on hold permanently.

The Rest of the Story...

On Christmas Day 1906, a prospector named Jim Swanson arrived and discovered gold in the location that would soon become the town of Rawhide. He would be the very first resident.

In February 1907, Swanson was joined by prospectors Charles ("Charley") B. Holman and Charles ("Scotty") A. McLeod. In bitter reaction to his being ordered not to do any more prospecting in or around Buckskin, a nearby camp, Holman suggested that Swanson's new camp be called "Rawhide" as a play on words in his contempt of the nearby Buckskin camp and mountain. From then on, the name stuck.

On February 12, 1907 at the age of 25 and hailing from Aurora, Nevada, McLeod had staked out claims on what was Hooligan Hill, a small mountain that used to stand nearly 400 feet over Rawhide to the southwest. Once the claims proved to be rich, he partnered with Holman and they sold their interests to Van Doren & Dunning for $20,000 plus 10% of profits. Van Doren & Dunning then sold those claims to the Nat C. Goodwin Company for a hearty $400,000. With their large commission in hand from the Dunning-Goodwin transaction, McLeod and Holman left to propect elsewhere.

By autumn 1907, McLeod and Holman returned to Rawhide to work claims at the north end of what was Stingaree Gulch, a canyon that had separated Grutt Hill and Balloon Hill, two small mountains that once stood at nearly 400 feet above Rawhide to the north and east, respectfully. In October 1907, the post office opened. It remained in operation until August 1941.

All told, the Rawhide boom lasted for two years. Exact dates of the people and events described below are unknown.

Word quickly spread of Rawhide's newfound prosperity. In the months that followed McLeod and Holman's successes, more big names of the time arrived and settled in Rawhide. Bill "Swiftwater" Gates, of Yukon fame, came and built the area's first stamp mill. Jack "Diamondfield" Davis came and provided strong legitimate financial backing. Tom Kearns, a prominent Irish miner from Utah, was known around Rawhide as "Honest Tom".

George Graham Rice, a showy con-man from Goldfield, Nevada had just swindled investors out of nearly $10,000,000 - but it was his aide that ran away with most of the loot - so he decided to try his luck in Rawhide. Unable to resist bragging, he contracted with a magazine series and was paid $0.03 per word for his writing of "My Adventure With Your Money". This attracted the attention of investigators and Rice ultimately wound up at Blackwell's Island Penitentiary in New York.

Also from Goldfield came George "Tex" Rickard (1870 - 1929), a businessman. Rickard had owned and operated a clubhouse called The Northern. Growing tired of Goldfield, he sold his Northern to Johnny Mays. He drove his 1907 Thomas Flyer to Rawhide and built a new Northern with the money from his transaction in Goldfield. When a disastrous fire in 1908 destroyed the Northern in Rawhide, he would have been penniless if it had not been for his mining claims - he sold them off for a hefty $1 million to an unknown party in New York. He never rebuilt his Northern in Rawhide. Instead, he left the town and went into the prize fighting business as a promoter. He was very successful - he handled boxing's first $1 million gate (Dempsey vs. Carpentier in 1921), built Madison Square Garden in 1925, founded the New York Rangers as Garden tenant in 1926 and named the NHL team after himself (Tex's Rangers), and built the Boston Garden in 1928. (View photo)

Riley Grannan and Swede Sam, business partners, purchased a half interest in Moss's Corner; where they soon built and operated their own clubhouse. Already well into his years, Grannan's time in Rawhide was short-lived - he died only months after settling in Rawhide.

Rawhide had no natural water source of its own. Water was sold and hauled in from the valley floor to the south at Dead Horse Wells - for 5 cents per gallon. Extensive attempts to create an efficient plumbing system throughout the town, with a water tower on Balloon Hill as its source, were never fully realized. Anna Rechel, Rawhide's longest and last resident, used a creative "rooftop-to-barrels" system on her house to collect rainfall water - to use for washing. The rest of her water needs were met by collecting it from nearby springs (within driving distance) in the area or from Fallon.

Rawhide had the latest electrical technology of its day in use - two telegraph lines and one long-distance telephone.

At its peak, Rawhide had three banks, two daily and three weekly newspapers, and daily auto stage and mail service from Schurz, Fallon, and Mina. Eugene Grutt and his partners paid $800,000 in 1908 for the primary property that consisted of the main townsite - 200 acres which also included Hooligan, Balloon, and Grutt Hills.

From 1911 to 1920, the California Mono Lake Power Company provided electricity to Rawhide's mines at a rate of $0.025 per kilowatt hour. In 1920, the Scheeline Estate of Reno took over all primary mining interests. The Nevada "Scheelite" Mines operation trickled over and established new headquarters in a canyon three miles southeast of Rawhide - where it remains standing in silent vigil to this day, but visitation is not allowed since the area is now owned by a private party.

Random mining operations came and went through the area over the next forty years or so, and Anna Rechel and her neighbors played their respective roles in them all. Other folks came, and went, but Anna stayed to the very end, up until her death in 1967. Rawhide did not long survive her, but at least the stone jailhouse did, where it is on permanent display at the City Complex in Hawthorne.