[Illustration: EAGLE GATE IS ONE OF THE INTERESTING MONUMENTS OF EARLIER ZION]
Humboldt and Humboldt House for thirty-five years have been famous among Overland travelers as a place of delight with shady groves, green lawns and flowing fountains. Apples, peaches, plums, and cherries grow in the oasis. At a point near Humboldt the old Oregon trail diverged from the Overland Route toward Northern California and Southern Oregon. All along through this section of Nevada, the Overland Route takes the way prepared by the Humboldt River.
[Illustration: SALT LAKE CITY AND COUNTY BUILDING, SHOWS WELL THE MODERN PROGRESS OF THE CITY]
No longer, however, does it wind with the stream, but burrows through mountains and spans the river as often as need be to save curves, distance and grades. In the last few years $10,531,425 have been spent in recreating this section of the main trans-continental highway.
[Illustration: THE LION HOUSE, BUILT BY BRIGHAM YOUNG TO SHELTER HIS FAMILY]
Lovelock, with its irrigation canals, great alfalfa fields and herds of cattle, is made by the union of the waters of the Humboldt and the fertile soil of its meadows. In a few years Lovelock will be multiplied a hundred fold in Nevada. An hour’s ride beyond is a favored section for the mirage, a summer-time illusion. It is said in the days of the trail many an emigrant thought he saw in the distance a second Lovelock, more lovely, only to be undeceived at even.
[Illustration: THE TITHING HOUSE IS ONE OF THE EARLIEST STRUCTURES]
At Hazen, the overland trains leave the passengers who are to go fortune hunting in Southern Nevada among the mines. Rawhide, Fairview, Wonder, Tonopah, Goldfield, Bullfrog, Manhattan, Rhyolite, Beatty and a score more of millionaire making camps already well known to prospectors, capitalists, and stock brokers throughout the country, are reached by the Nevada-California branch railway from Hazen, which connects at Mina with the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad. In these regions the scenes of the Comstock Lode days of half a century ago are being repeated. Towns are created overnight—millionaires are made between meals. Stock exchanges ride high upon the enormous output of the mining certificates. Goldfield, but recently a desert, is a city of ten thousand people with good hotels, banks, daily papers, water, electric and gas plants, railroad, telegraph and telephone service, and indeed all the utilities of a modern city. Tonopah is of like history with somewhat smaller population. Here are all the cosmopolitan and adventurous spirits that are lured by gold, making these camps on the human side picturesque beyond measure. Marvelous are the stories, the true ones perhaps most so of all. One man went to Tonopah on $150 he had borrowed; in three years he was worth $2,000,000. Another owned a bed, a tent, and a ten days’ food supply; Goldfield—and today he owns a million dollars. A few men leased a mine; in five months they added to their property two million dollars. Little wonder it is a land of optimism; each treasure seeker has such examples before him to inspire him with hope; and the Nevada camps are the most hopeful and probably the most wonderful mining camps in the world.