Fame and fortune may seem to go hand-in-hand, but fate divides the two more often than not.
Look no further than Henry Comstock for a prime example. That name should sound familiar. After all, the Comstock Lode is a legendary part of how “the West was won.”
The population and economic booms his namesake caused became the foundation of Nevada — “The Silver State” — and he has been enshrined in history, with little recognition of what fate had in store for to him.
A little over a decade after the Comstock Lode was found, Henry Comstock found himself penniless in the hills of Montana, pulling the trigger of a revolver pressed to his head.
What he wanted, he had and lost. And in his tale, there is a classic example of what divides the fates of miners who make their fortune, and those who do not.
Searching For The Source
About a decade after the start of the California gold rush left so many desperate men poorer and at least a thousand miles from home, news of an even greater silver and gold discovery pulled them back east into the mountains of Nevada to the Comstock Lode.
History now grants Henry credit for the discovery, but — truth be told — he probably doesn’t deserve the recognition he received.
All evidence points to the Comstock Lode being found two years earlier by the Grosh brothers, both trained mineralogists, and early transplants from the California gold fields.
Hosea and Allen Grosh had collected silver and gold samples — and created maps of their claims — by 1857. But to establish a legitimate claim they had to head west to California for funding and official recognition. It was too great of a burden to bear, in the end.
Hosea injured his foot and died a horrible death by sepsis.
Allen made the same mistake so many others did in the era. He fell behind schedule while trying to cross the Sierra Nevadas too late in the year. A local doctor amputated parts of his limbs, but within days in mid-December, 1857, Allen was gone as well.
When news of their deaths reached Henry Comstock — then an unproven prospector and shepherd the Grosh brothers entrusted with their cabin and lockbox — he claimed everything for himself.
The papers meant nothing to him, as an uneducated man, but he most certainly knew the significance of the gold and silver samples.
More than maybe anyone else, Henry Comstock knew what was at stake. But he also knew that he was far from the only man searching for what the Grosh brothers found.
While Comstock searched for the source of the Grosh’s gold and silver, four other miners had found traces of gold at the head of the Gold Canyon by the beginning of 1859.
Comstock learned of them, along with another four prospectors, and they all staked claims around what is now called Gold Hill as soon as possible. What seemed like an unprecedented change of fortune was quickly being stripped away from Henry.
He knew the odds were against him staking legitimate claims to what he saw as his rightful fortune. The race was on, and the scent was in the air. The hills were thick with men staking out anything that seemed valuable.
Two of these prospectors, finding all the established and obviously profitable land claimed, moved up to the head of Six Mile Canyon in the Spring of 1859.
Their attempts to prospect for gold in small streams with a rocker (a version 
of which is pictured to the right) failed, and they were about to abandon their claim when they made what would become part of a greater discovery. They dug a small but deep pit to collect water for their rockers, only to find a layer of thick blackish-blue sand at the bottom.
If it weren’t for the greed and tenacity of Comstock himself, they may never have realized what they found.
The Mother Lode
Comstock was incensed by the new claim. The men were on land that Comstock had previously claimed for grazing land, after all.
Plus, he had a nearly two-year lead on many of the men staking profitable claims all around him, but very little to show for it.
Through threats and machinations, he managed to get himself and his partner, Manny Penrod, into a deal that got them in on the claim.
On June 12th, 1859, Comstock and Penrod finally found something worthwhile adjacent to the grazing land. They were digging a trench when they exposed black manganese mixed with bluish-gray quartz in sand, along with visible bits of gold.
Two more partners were added after building mills on site to process the ore. But the thick blackish-blue sand was literally gumming up the works. It would’ve looked very similar to the picture to the right.
By all accounts, it was like wet putty. The prospectors couldn’t properly sieve material through their rockers to collect the small flakes of gold.
Two weeks after the find in the trench, when that putty-like substance was assayed, it became clear that Comstock finally found his fortune.
The dark sand was a rich mixture of sulfides, three parts silver sulfide to one part gold sulfide. The same gunk was being dredged up from the bottom of the original water pit that was dug right before the only adjacent claim was about to be forfeited.
The mother lode had finally been found, and Comstock had laid claim to a large swath of it.
Where It All Went Wrong
Everything seemed to have worked out for Henry Comstock, and he certainly thought he was living the dream during the Summer of 1859.
But we already know what fate had in store for him. What twist led to him fruitlessly prospecting in the hills of Montana a decade later, and ultimately ending his own life?
The answer to that is simple. He had a claim to untold riches, but no way to do anything about it.
He sold his holdings of what would become the Ophir mine for $11,000, and his half of the “Spanish” mine for $5,500, collecting a hefty sum for a prospector at the time.
But the trade-goods stores he built in Carson City and Silver City quickly failed — the man had no business skills and was clearly illiterate — and he had no claims in the region within a matter of months.
Similar fates befell other early prospectors who managed to stake claims that would generate millions of dollars a year. Of those that we know about:
- Manny Penrod, Comstock’s partner, sold his share of the Ophir and “Spanish” claims for just $8,500.
- Patrick McLaughlin sold his one-sixth share of the Ophir claim for $3,000, lost the money, and had to work as a cook at a mine in California.
- Peter O’Riley, by far the smartest of the Ophir prospectors, collected dividends until selling for around $40,000. He built a stone hotel in Virginia City, and dealt in mining stocks. But he began having visions and built a tunnel into the Sierras in an area with no mineralization at all. He lost everything, was declared insane, and died in an asylum.
Meanwhile, production from the Comstock mines peaked in 1877 at over $14,000,000 of gold and $21,000,000 of silver per year. In today’s dollars, that’s about $320 million and $500 million, respectively. Parts of the Comstock Lode are still worked to this day.
Hindsight shows us that the prospectors were fleeced, but consider their situation. They didn’t know how much gold and silver was underground, and even if they did, they had no way to get it out.
They couldn’t afford to hire miners. They couldn’t afford equipment. And they would never find partners who would throw down all the money and take on all of the risk without taking all of the reward as well.
The mining industry has changed so very much over the 160 years since the Grosh brothers died and Henry Comstock started down his path to fame and ruin, but one aspect of it never will.
No matter how good the find is, only the miners with access to massive funding will claim their fortunes in the end.
