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Esmeralda County
Trails to
the Past of Nevada is accepting any donations of
genealogy materials that you may have such as marriage
announcements, news articles, old obituaries, births,
(you do not need the birth certificate) just the
information, and biographies. If you have any of
these items please contact me Marie Miller the Nevada State
Administrator.
Esmeralda County is one of the
original counties in Nevada, established in 1861. When
it was organized, it comprised the part of the Nevada
Territory south of the 39th parallel and east of Mason
Valley. Esmeralda is the Spanish and Portuguese word for
"emerald". An early California miner from San Jose Ca,
James Manning Cory, named the Esmeralda Mining District
after Esmeralda the Gypsy dancer from The Hunchback of
Notre Dame.
Just after the organization of
Esmeralda County, the vast majority of the land area had
yet to be discovered. John C. Frémont was one of the few
people who had explored parts of the county. He had
crossed Big Smoky Valley in 1845. Also, Aurora and its
northern corridor had been discovered. In 1862 and 1863,
the area along the Reese River was discovered during the
Reese River excitement. The event resulted in the
establishment of three mining districts in the Toiyabe
Range, namely Marysville, Twin River, and Washington,
and the establishment of a number of settlements and
ranches in Esmeralda County. Explorers pursued south and
explored the Shoshone Mountains. The mining district
Union was organized after silver was found in 1863 and
the settlement of Ione was founded there.
The total area of Esmeralda County
more than halved as Nye County was organized on February
16, 1864. That county was entirely created out of land
that used to be part of Esmeralda County. Esmeralda has
had three county seats: Aurora until 1883, Hawthorne
from 1883 to 1907 and finally Goldfield. At one point,
due to the disputed border with California, Aurora was
simultaneously the county seat of both Mono County,
California and Esmeralda County, Nevada. Samuel Clemens
(Mark Twain) wrote about his time as a miner in the
Esmeralda District in his book Roughing It. Esmeralda
grew from a gold mining boom in the first years of the
20th century. The mines were largely tapped out by the
end of the 1910s and the economy and population declined
afterwards.
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Unincorporated communities
Each of these
communities is a census-designated place:
Dyer
Goldfield (county seat)
Silver
Peak
Ghost
towns
Blair
Coaldale
Hardluck
Lida
Gold
Point
Palmetto |
| Adjacent counties
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