Tonopah, NV

Legend has it that the town of Tonopah, Nev., owes its beginnings to a wandering jackass.

As the story goes, in the spring of 1900, rancher and occasional prospector Jim Butler was searching for ore in central Nevada with his two burros. One evening Butler set up camp near a rock outcrop alongside Tonopah Springs. (Tonopah means “little water” in Shoshone.) The next morning, he discovered one of his burros had wandered away. He picked up a loose rock to toss in frustration, but the rock’s heavy weight stopped him. He packed the sample and a few others in his knapsack before moving on. That sample contained silver ore, worth $200 a ton, and turned out to be a part of the biggest silver strike in Nevada history.

Located in a wide cleft in the high desert between Mount Oddie and Mount Brougher, Tonopah boasted 10,000 residents during the silver boom in the early 1900s. Today’s population hovers around 3,000, except when it swells with visitors during the annual Jim Butler Days celebration. Each year on the last weekend in July, Tonopah turns back time by honoring the man and his legendary burro.

A big parade Saturday morning kicks off the event highlighted by “Jim and his trusty burro, Yukon.” In the afternoons, modern-day miners compete in the Nevada State Mining Championships. Old-time events include mucking (contestants shovel ore into a cart), spike driving, and single- (one-man) and double-jack (two-man) drilling, where a steel drill is held in one hand and turned, while the other hand (or a second person) pounds the drill with a hammer of varying weight into solid rock. Jim Merlino, a Tonopah native, heads up the town’s convention bureau and has been organizing the championships for 18 years.

“Jim Butler Days is a great event for the town,” Merlino says. “Teams from all over the West have competed in the championships, and they bring along their families and friends.”

Watching these hard-working competitors gives a glimpse of how underground mining used to work. The hole created by the single- and double-jackers is just big enough to hold a stick of dynamite. That’s how mines were expanded and ore extracted. The painstaking work of these drillers created the “muck,” and the muckers loaded the rock chunks into ore carts to be carried out of the mines. They were paid $4 a day, considered a good day’s wage back then.

The Mining Championships are the highlight of Jim Butler Days for most visitors, but plenty of other activities take place around town, including a pancake breakfast on Saturday, stock car races, a community barbecue, and free tours of the Tonopah Historic Mining Park—high up on Mount Oddie overlooking downtown.

Only three years old, the mining park is a shining jewel in the crown of this “Queen of the Silver Camps.” Located on the very site of Butler’s first claim, which became the Mizpah Mine, the park includes mining gear, a museum, gift shop, and daily guided tours.

Eventually, curator and director Shawn Hall hopes to take visitors 200 feet underground into the depths of the Mizpah Mine to experience the conditions the miners worked in. Hall also hopes to create an underground theater, exhibits, and eventually conduct tours of some of the branch tunnels.

“We want to re-create a Tonopah tradition and hold balls and parties down there, too,” he says, referring to the annual Christmas balls held underground during the early 1900s—an oddity, for miners typically thought the presence of women in the mines brought bad luck.

Meanwhile, the legend of the rambling burro and its silver-seeking owner, whether rooted in fact or fiction, lives on in Tonopah—told and retold each July, along with a smile and a knowing wink.

Sherril Steele-Carlin is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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