Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Jan 4, 2007

History Nuggets: Jackrabbit, Nevada

Jackrabbits are hares, not bunnies. If you ride through Nevada in the early morning, they love to dive out of the undergrowth in front of you, rather than bounding away as by rights they should. It is as if their survival instinct is to trip you up and prevent your progress, not to run away. I lost count of how many I saw, each one waiting until the very last minute before deciding to attempt suicide in front of my wheels.

Jackrabbits are not miners, either, but Nevada legend has it that one of them started an entire silver mine. Fourteen miles north of Pioche, Nevada and a long way south from anywhere else, the Jackrabbit state historical marker stands by the side of the road. To the north the wide sweep of the Great Basin fills up half the view; a vast blue sky fills up the rest. US-93, straight, fast and empty, bisects the USA’s largest desert (190,000 square miles!) for as far as the eye can see. On either side of this divider grows a low-slung desert “forest”, its juniper bushes adding welcome greenery to the miles of arid landscape.

As I approached, the road was stained blood red, as though there’d been some major road kill. Then I saw the blackened stumps of burned vegetation, and realized that this area had been the victim of one of that summer’s many wildfires: what I was seeing was most likely the leftovers of fire-fighting work.

Local legend has it that the mine was founded in 1876 when Isaac Newton Garrison picked up a rock to throw at a jackrabbit…and found that he was holding a chunk of high-quality silver. I guess he could only be glad that, unlike his namesake’s apple, the rock didn’t land on his own head.

Either way, within months of the jackrabbit’s lucky escape from a bad headache, “Royal City” was a camp heaving with miners, equipped with all the usual accoutrements: a store, a smithy, a place to eat and drink. Later, it even got its own post office. The stagecoach stopped there, the last watering hole before heading on back to Pioche.

At first, production was about ten tons a day. The silver sold at anything from $40 per ton to around $2000 per ton for a total of two to six million dollars over the mine’s lifetime. The ore was milled in Pioche and Bristol, the latter of which gave its name to the mountain range on the eastern slopes of which the mine was dug.

By the 1880s things were winding down, but when, in 1891, a fifteen mile narrow gauge railroad — the Jack Rabbit Road — was opened between the mine and Pioche, it increased again. The name stuck, and lives on still as the Jackrabbit Mining District. But 1893 was the end, apart from a couple of two-year spurts in the early 20th century. Now, if you take about one mile of dirt road off US-93, you’ll find some shafts and a head frame, and the jumbled remains of wooden huts … maybe even a stone foundation or two.

And some ghosts. There is always going to be a ghost or two, if only of the jackrabbits.