Schwab, Echo-Lee Mining District, Funeral Mts (Funeral Range), Amargosa Range, Inyo County, California, USAi
| Regional Level Types | |
|---|---|
| Schwab | - not defined - |
| Echo-Lee Mining District | Mining District |
| Funeral Mts (Funeral Range) | Mountain Range |
| Amargosa Range | Mountain Range |
| Inyo County | County |
| California | State |
| USA | Country |
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Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):
36° 30' 19'' North , 116° 43' 25'' West
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):
Köppen climate type:
Nearest Settlements:
| Place | Population | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Beatty | 1,010 (2011) | 44.9km |
Mindat Locality ID:
259124
Long-form identifier:
mindat:1:2:259124:0
GUID (UUID V4):
c9f10382-02a4-45b9-bd33-f3253b1241b2
A former populated place (mining ghost town).
in December of 1906, as the Echo-Lee District was beginning to swing into its real boom stage, a new townsite was started on the Echo side of the district to serve the many mines which were beginning to operate in the vicinity. In a fit a grandeur, the townsite was named Schwab, after the well-known steel and mining magnate, who had peripheral interests in the Echo-Lee District, The townsite was promoted by the Schwab Townsite Company, which was incorporated in Nevada on December 31st, and was financed by S. H. Black, J. C. Houtz and J. E. Cram. The company's treasury for promotion and site improvement was $30,000, and was fully paid in advance by the three principles, making Schwab a closed corporation.
Large, full-page ads were placed in the Rhyolite Herald and the Bullfrog Miner on December 28th, announcing the formation of the town, and proudly noting that it was the first town in the Echo-Lee District, which was true by only a few days. "The Price of Lots will Multiply by Five in Ninety Days," warned the ads, and to prove the point, the owners announced that arrangements had already been completed for the establishment of a restaurant, a lodging house, a mercantile store, an assay house and a saloon. In addition, the new wagon road from the Lee side of the district into Echo Canyon was almost finished, and would soon be upgraded into an auto road. Water would be provided to the townsite within thirty days, either by well or by hauling from Furnace Creek, and a stage line and telephone connections would soon arrive. An application had been made for a post office. Fifty lots, said the promoters, had been sold already. Schwab, summed up the ads, was "A Town with an Assured Future," and would "be the scene of the greatest mining excitement in all the history of Nevada."
The next week, as the Bullfrog Miner quaintly noted, "The town of Schwab started for the Nevada desert yesterday from Los Angeles in a box car." The materials for the new canvas city, added Mr. Houtz, would be enough to house several hundred people. Several loads had already gone out, including material for a restaurant, lodging house, store and feed yard, and arrangements had been made for a hardware store and a general merchandise store. By mid-January Black and Cram reported that the new town was flourishing. Demands for lots exceeded expectations, and inquiries had been received from as far away as Boston. Two carloads of townsite materials had arrived, and three more were on their way. The Kimball stage company had plans to put in a stage line, the well diggers had found water at a depth of only five feet, and arrangements for a bakery, a grocery store, a hardware store and another saloon had been made. Eighteen head of horses had been engaged by the town promoters in order to haul all this material from the railroad siding at Rosewell. Streets were being graded, and ample food, horse feed and water was now available to all travelers and prospectors, so they no longer needed to come fully self-sufficient when they entered the Echo Canyon region.
On January 18th, the Rhyolite Herald reported that seventy-seven lots had been sold in Schwab, "many of them being to eastern people who are already familiar with the Lee and Echo Districts through the ads in the local papers." A fourth carload of supplies, containing eight tons, had been delivered to the town, and a fifth, of three tons, was expected shortly. The population of the district surrounding Schwab was estimated to be 400, and twenty-nine men had been counted at the Schwab saloon at one time. Eight lots in the townsite had been sold to the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, and the Rhyolite Herald ruefully wondered if "Tuxedos will soon be fashionable there." The townsite company had ordered a 45-horsepower Apperson auto, which was expected in late January, and which would be put on the run from Rhyolite to the new town. The following week, the Bullfrog Miner reported that an abundance of good water was now available at the townsite, and that many good substantial tent buildings had been erected. The first stage for Schwab had left Rhyolite on January 24th, and the paper surmised that the new town was already "established as the distributing point of that district."
On February 1st, the papers reported that the feed yard was now ready to furnish food and shelter for horses, that the new automobile had arrived and was ready to start service to the town, and that the Kimball Brothers had established a regular stage service to Lee and Schwab, leaving Rhyolite every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. By the beginning of March, the Bullfrog Miner reported that 100 men were employed in the mines surrounding the townsite, such as the Inyo Gold, the Skibo and the Echo Gilt Edge. The Lee-Schwab wagon road, which was too steep in places for autos to negotiate, was being improved, and arrangements had been made to bring in a well drilling machine, in order to improve the water supply. "There are excellent accommodations for both man and beast at Schwab, and one is assured a visit to the new town will not be regretted."
By the end of March, the three-month-old town's population was estimated at 200. The Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company had its poles up and was to begin stringing wire from Lee to Schwab at once. The stage service had been increased to a daily basis, and the auto service also planned to go on a daily schedule soon. But by now Schwab had a greater claim to fame. "One of the most unique wonders of the new West," said the Bullfrog Miner, "is the town of Schwab, Cal., owned and promoted by women." This news was quite unique, and caused many headlines in local papers. "A Mining Camp Built by Ladies," as the Death Valley Chuck-Walla put it, was an unusual sight in the west. Yet when the matter is examined it seems much more natural than extraordinary. The first woman to enter the company was Gertrude Fesler, who had come to Rhyolite from Chicago and opened a brokerage office--Miss Gertrude Fesler, Stocks and Mines Bought and Sold." Fesler had purchased J. C. Houtz's interest in Schwab, and through her dealings with the other two owners, had become acquainted with their wives. A Col. Dunn, who had bought out J. E. Cram, decided that his wife could ably care for his interests in the townsite, leaving him free for other pursuits, and Mrs. Black--Mrs. Dunn's daughter-in-law--had also purchased her husband's share, thus forming the all-female company. Helen H. Black became president of the new Schwab Townsite Company, with Mrs. Dunn as the vice president and Gertrude Fesler acting as secretary, treasurer and chief promoter.
Ownership by ladies such as these meant some unusual changes in a desert mining town, and the Death Valley Chuck-Walla was quick to point them out. "The gamblers were told to get out. Saloon men were frowned at and sporting women were positively refused entrance. Men said that a mining camp could not exist under such restrictions, but Schwab did. The women hastened to secure the postoffice, the first in the district, and everybody in the three towns [Schwab, Lee, California and Lee, Nevada] had to come to Schwab for mail."
In addition to the new postoffice, which was approved and established on April 5th, Schwab also was the home of the Echo Miners Union, organized early in April. By the end of that month, the union counted seventy-five members, who adopted the Rhyolite scale of wages of $4.50 per day. the townsite company donated a lot to the union, and a large tent was erected to be used until funds could be raised for a Miners Union Hall. Several more town lots were sold during April, but Mrs. Black reported that the one big need for the town was a general mercantile store, to enable miners and companies to get supplies close at hand.
But even with all these improvements, Schwab was never a serious rival to Lee, California. The two towns were separated by eight miles and the Funeral Range, and each was the center for approximately the same number of mines. But Lee, California had all the geographic advantages. All supplies and materials reaching Schwab had to come through Lee, so it was only natural that supply houses at Lee dominated the trade of the two towns. In addition, since Lee was much loser to Rhyolite, that town reaped all the advantages of frequent notices in the Rhyolite newspapers, which amounted to free advertising. Reporters and visitors could travel to Lee and back to Rhyolite in one day, but getting in and out of Schwab took longer, so it was only natural for them to concentrate their attention on the closer town. And once the town of Lee had the upper hand, it was quick to build upon the advantage. Miners and prospectors from the Echo District, for example, found that it cost them no more to travel into Lee to obtain their supplies than to purchase them at Schwab, and when this was coupled with the prospect of a night's entertainment in the larger camp, most began to do so. Perhaps the Death Valley Chuck-Walla was right, in that a mining camp suffering from the lack of female entertainment and gambling, and with drinking frowned upon, had too many disadvantages to survive in the mining frontiers of the early 1900s.
For a combination of these causes, the town of Schwab, after its first several months of growth, began to stagnate. It lost the townsite battle to Lee, and when the Panic of 1907 closed many of the mines in the Echo-Lee District, it soon became very apparent that two towns were one too many for the district to support. So many mines clued so quickly in the fall of 1907 that the Echo Miners Union was disbanded in November.
Schwab died a quick and unmourned death, after only a year of life, and was not heard of after 1907. The town had never even reached the stage where a wooden building was raised, so it was relatively simple for the disappointed merchants to pack up their tent stores and head for brighter horizons. [68]
Schwab is not located where most writers of western lore have assumed it to be. According to most accounts, the townsite of Schwab was located directly below the Inyo Mine, in the lower Echo Canyon wash. For this reason, they claimed, no one has ever been-able to definitely find any remains of Schwab, since the 1930s mining activity at the Inyo site erased all vestiges of the former town.
But past historians have been mislead by the contemporary accounts of Schwab, such as the advertisements which placed it only one-half to three-fourths of a mile from the Inyo Mine. Operations at that mine, between 1907 and the 1930s, covered many different areas of the company's 214 acres of claims. In 1907, Schwab was only less than a mile from the Inyo Mine, but from a different portion of the. mine than that operated in the 1930s, where the ball mill and housing ruins now stand.
The best contemporary description or the location of Schwab is from the Rhyolite Herald of 22 February 1907.
The town of Schwab is situated just below the Inyo and Skibo camps at the junction of the wagon roads leading up the east arm of Echo canyon and to Death Valley on the south. In other words, Schwab is located in the north or upper branch of Echo Canyon, astride the main Echo-Lee wagon road, across a small ridge from the present Inyo ruins, and about 1-1/2 miles from those ruins. At this location, evidence of the old townsite may be found.
The remains consist of seven leveled tent sites, some with ow and crude stone retaining walls remaining. More tent sites were once present, but have been erased by high water in the adjacent wash during Death Valley's infrequent but violent flash floods. Two of the tent sites have eroded cellars behind them, about ten feet square and five feet deep. Since an immense pile of broken 1900 to 1910-dated beer bottles is located directly behind one of these tent-cellar sites, it is safe to say that this was the tent saloon, where once twenty-nine men were counted drinking at one time. The townsite covers several hundred feet along the-shallow wash which marks the northern branch of Echo Canyon, and remains are mostly restricted to the west side of that wash On the east side, however, is another tent location, and a shallow, unmarked grave, a lonely monument to one prospector who ended his days during the brief life of Schwab. About 300 yards to the west of the townsite is a crude derrick, the remains of Schwab's well. The well site is dry and completely filled in, but numerous five gallon cans are scattered along the trail from the well to the townsite.
The remains of Schwab are fragile and scant. The site needs to be examined by historical archaeologists and deserves interpretation as one of the west's many short-lived mining camps. It is also in need of some sort of protection to prevent it from disappearing back into the terrain of the canyon's wash. The Schwab townsite will be nominated to the National Register in conjunction with the Inyo Mine complex.Latschar, 1981
Select Mineral List Type
Standard Detailed Gallery Strunz Chemical ElementsCommodity List
This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded from this region.Mineral List
Mineral list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities2 valid minerals.
Detailed Mineral List:
Gallery:
List of minerals arranged by Strunz 10th Edition classification
| Group 1 - Elements | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ⓘ | Gold | 1.AA.05 | Au |
| Group 4 - Oxides and Hydroxides | |||
| ⓘ | Quartz | 4.DA.05 | SiO2 |
List of minerals for each chemical element
| O | Oxygen | |
|---|---|---|
| O | ⓘ Quartz | SiO2 |
| Si | Silicon | |
| Si | ⓘ Quartz | SiO2 |
| Au | Gold | |
| Au | ⓘ Gold | Au |
Localities in this Region
- California
- Inyo County
- Amargosa Range
- Funeral Mts (Funeral Range)
- Echo-Lee Mining District
- Funeral Mts (Funeral Range)
- Amargosa Range
- Inyo County
Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality
North America PlateTectonic Plate
- Antler Foreland BasinBasin
- Basin and Range BasinsBasin
- Mojave DomainDomain
USA
- Death Valley National ParkNational Park
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