 Frontier Fighters! Frontier Fighters! Thrilling drama enacted by those daring men who fought and conquered the West. In 1849, Ethan and Josea Grosh, sons of a Pennsylvania preacher, came to California by sea from Philadelphia. They failed to make more than a bare living in the plazas, and for that reason drifted eastward across the Sierras into the Washoe District and began to mine in Gold Canyon. One day, Josea called excitedly to his brother Ethan. Ethan! Ethan, come over here quickly! Don't lose a minute! Ethan! Ethan, look! Look at what? Don't you know what that metal is? For sure, it's thin sheet lead broken up into fine pieces. Ethan, man, this is pure silver! Silver? Well, let's turn some of it over. Look at the colors. Violet, blue, indigo blue, all the colors associated with pure silver or even blue, black and greenish black. I wonder what this ore will assay. It goes as high as $3,000 to the ton. If it's as pure as we think it is, well, we'd better stake out some more claims and get a couple of sacks over to the nearest assayer's office. Looks like we've hit a tens strike, all right? The assayer to whom they took the ore said it would show $3,500 to the ton. The next steps the Grosh brothers took to make themselves millionaires were attended by tragedy. The capitalist who was to put up the funds was murdered by desperados. A few days later, Josea Grosh injured his foot with a pick. He died from blood poisoning. Ethan Grosh, in an heroic attempt to get from Johnstown to Placerville, where funds might be more abundant, became lost in a blinding four-day snowstorm. When, at last, he stumbled into a miner's camp, he was suffering from frozen feet and extreme exposure. After 12 days of delirium, the hardy pioneers who had kept the vigil with the sick man knew that he was dying. I...my brother, Josea, we...we found a load. It's... It's talking out of his fever, I reckon. He keeps mumbling about a rich state somewhere. He never tells the place. $3,500 to the ton. Like any man, a billionaire. I guess he's about as generous for a family. Yeah, some lesson we know who he is. At least we can write his kin, folks. Tell...tell my father I... I lived as he wanted me to. Clean. All right, your father, Ethan. Now, why don't you stop worrying and try and get some rest? Yes. Yes. I'll get some rest. I'll... Bread. With Ethan Grosh, died the secret of his discovery, which in reality was the first time that any man had put a pick into what was later to be the big bonanza. In the spring of 1859, Peter O'Reilly and Patrick McLaughlin were prospecting near the head of Six Mile Canyon, and they quite unexpectedly found a very rich vein of gold. In a few hours, the cradle showed around $300. Fun excitement? Was that its height? Well, it sure looks like a rich stripe. Jumping to Hosebad, maybe Riley and McLaughlin are going to be as rich as Old King Miles, maybe. Oh! Oh! What's the only excitement about somebody holding a pair and eating on my land? Sure, and is this your land, too? If so, you must be having a finger in every clam in the bud. Now, none of your lip, Riley. We know you're too well-come-stuck. Now, just by moose. Yeah, Pancake, don't you go stirring up no fight here? I'll thank you, not to call me Pancake. I got a name. Any man who's too lazy to make his bread and just lives off Black Jack's Pancake to me. How do you run this cradle, O' Riley? Any born fool would know the answer to that one. I run it with the water from that spring up your hill. Oh, he said so! Well, that spring is on land that I took a claim on during the winter. There goes Pancake again, outsmarting another fella. Now, listen, Pancake, this is our claim, see? It's been staked and registered. And if you're wasn't a born, rootin' lazy hug instead of a man, you'd be satisfied with Gold Hill. Who you callin' a rootin' lazy hug? I, for two cents, have plugged you both! Look out, Riley, he's pullin' the conch! Yeah, yeah, now I know you sackin' like bulls instead of men. Pancake, you got a claim to that spring and you, Riley, and McLaughlin', you got a claim to that load you're workin'. Why don't you go in as partners? What? Well, I wouldn't be partners with a like to him. Pancake comes tough. All right, just try runnin' that cradle without water and see how much gold you'll get out of that load. I know my rights and my thunder, I'll have them. Ha, ha, ha! Just try runnin' that cradle without water. I'm just wonderin' how much gold you'll get out of my new mind. Ha, ha, ha! Yes, hey, man, this ain't neither a pair nor a sideshow. If this one load is just a bustin' it's side with Gold, maybe the whole mountain is. Well, Riley, I don't know whether Pancake's fluffin' or not, but I suppose if we don't cut him in, he's just liable to make a lot of trouble for us with that loud mouth of yours. Sure, Patrick, the worst of it isn't havin' him for a partner and hey, not doin' a tap of work. But if this load turns out the way it should, it won't be called Riley Load or McLaughlin' Load, but Comstock Load. In this very dramatic and unusual fashion was Comstock Load discovered. And not as a silver mine, but as a gold mine. Every miner who worked the load cursed the blue-black metal that was always found at the bottom of the cradles and which carried away their quicksilver. Soon there were great piles of it outside of their diggings. More people came into Nevada, crude towns sprang up with tent houses and saloons. Mount Davidson was the scene of the White House as the miners pick and shovel dug into her sides. Men tired of calling the place where they ate and slept a camp and dubbed it Mount Pleasant Point. But this name gave way to another in a few days. A camp character called Old Virginia after a nice rebel fell at the door of his cabin breaking his whiskey bottle. Rising to his knees, he waved the bottleneck around shouting. He waved the bottleneck around shouting. I baptize you, I baptize you for the glistens of me. I baptize this ground, Yes sir, yes sir, there's it. I baptize this ground Virginia town. I preach it in the best little town in the west. The pride of Nevada, Virginia town. Someday, it'll be a city to say words that read Virginia City. Within a few weeks, Virginia town became the most important place in the Washoe district. Early in July, 1859, a California rancher by the name of Augustus Harrison visited the Washoe mines. Hulking around in the huge piles of this outcast blue-black ore, he picked up a sample that looked especially rich to him. In Grass Valley, a leading gold camp on the west slope of the Sierras, he showed the specimen to Judge James Walsh, who had it assayed. Judge, if they're so orious as rich as my hunch leads me to believe. Well, it's hard to say just how many hundreds of dollars of gold they saw would run to the town, or it may run a very negligible amount. These old timers may have been pretty wise in throwing it away. We'll soon know the worst of the best. Here comes the assay. Well, sir, what news do you have for us? Good news, assay. This ore had run you over $4,775 to the town. What? What's the price? $4,775 of gold to the town. I didn't say gold, Judge Walsh. Now that you ask me, it's silver. Silver? Nearly $5,000 worth of silver to the town, and these miners in the Washoe district are throwing it away. Sullivan, we're starting out at daybreak. Whether those miners know it or not, they've struck a mighty big bonanza. No news in the world spread more rapidly than the report of this strike. Hundreds of men poured into Nevada from all over the Rockies. But it wasn't until the next year, when the first bar of silver bullion, the first ever produced in Nevada, appeared in the windows of San Francisco banks, that the flames of excitement burned at white heat. Suddenly, a new civilization sprang up in the west, and Nevada was the center of it. Silver poured out of Nevada in a seemingly never-ending stream. From Maine to the Rockies, there was but one cry, Nevada. These adventurous souls survived Indian raids, blizzards, and short rations to seek and find untold riches. Here were born the fortunes of the fares, the macaes, the floods in the Baldwins. The rush of immigration into Nevada was halted for a moment, as a messenger ran into a crowded saloon in Virginia City with momentous news. The news from the nation's happening. It's come at last, for it's something they're fired on. The Civil War has begun for the Civil War. I'm for honest, Abe Lankin. Three cheers for the North. I'm picking shovel right now, and picking up a gun. This is going to be a long war. Oh, they will want other things than men. He'll want money. Money. Say, buddy, there's enough silver in Nevada to keep the treasury of these United States full for years and years to come. The slogan of Nevada will be, keep a stream of silver flowing from Virginia City to Washington DC. Everybody, I am setting up the drink. Everybody have one and drink to the USA and Nevada. Hey, don't put a bottle in Nevada. Nevada, as a free territory and later as a state, played a most important role in the nation's destiny. And the silver which poured out of the Comstock load and other rich bonanzas helped to pay the cost of the war. For almost a quarter of a century, the silver boom continued, a boom that created bonanza kings and queens. Today, what remains of this fury that swept over the nation and centered in Nevada is a number of famous ghost towns. But because of the silver mines, Nevada is an important, prosperous state, and the nation has an accurate chronicle of the deeds of more hardy pioneers. In the truest sense, frontier fighters.