Esmeralda County, Nevada: History
Esmeralda County is one of the original counties in Nevada, established on November 25, 1861. When it was organized, it comprised the part of the Nevada Territory south of the 39th parallel and east of Mason Valley. Esmeralda is the Spanish and Portuguese word for "emerald". An early California miner from San Jose, James Manning Cory, named the Esmeralda Mining District after Esmeralda the Romani dancer from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Just after the organization of Esmeralda County, the vast majority of the land area had yet to be explored. John C. Frémont was one of the few people who had explored parts of the county. He had crossed Big Smoky Valley in 1845. Also, Aurora and its northern corridor had been encountered. In 1862 and 1863, the area along the Reese River was explored during the Reese River excitement. The event resulted in the establishment of three mining districts in the Toiyabe Range, namely Marysville, Twin River, and Washington, and the establishment of a number of settlements and ranches in Esmeralda County. Explorers pursued south and explored the Shoshone Mountains. The mining district Union was organized after silver was found in 1863 and the settlement of Ione was founded there.
The total area of Esmeralda County more than halved as Nye County was organized on February 16, 1864, entirely out of land that used to be part of Esmeralda County. Esmeralda has had three county seats: Aurora until 1883, Hawthorne from 1883 to 1907 and finally Goldfield. At one point, due to the disputed border with California, Aurora was simultaneously the county seat of both Mono County, California and Esmeralda County. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote about his time as a miner in the Esmeralda District in his book Roughing It.
Esmeralda grew from a gold mining boom in the first years of the 20th century. Goldfield, a town founded in 1902, increased rapidly, and it soon became the largest town in Nevada, with about 20,000 people in 1906, but its population rapidly decreased after labor disputes in Goldfield from the efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World and Western Federation of Miners to control labor in the area. The mines were largely tapped out by the end of the 1910s and the economy and population declined afterwards.