Gold and Silver in the Mojave: Images of a Last Frontier

In the 1890s, historian Frederick Jackson Turner lamented that the frontier was gone and with it the Old West, but overlooked was some 50,000 square miles of a frontier line outlining the Mojave Desert the Last Frontier. In this arid land, unsettled and sketchily mapped written off as godforsaken and worse there would now be a headlong 25-year rush for richesand for the Old West a grand, tumultuous, rowdy Last Act. Overnight towns named Randsburg, Tonopah, Goldfield, Rhyolite, Greenwater, Skidoo, Ballarat, and Bagdad popped up in this arid desert as gold and silver was discovered. The rush was on as miners worked their various digs: the Yellow Aster, the Lost Gunsight, Mizpah, Belmont, Mohawk, Florence, the Lost Breyfogle, Bullfrog, Bagdad, and the Glory Hole. Just as quickly ghost towns replaced booming towns as mines played out. All of this is captured in rare photographs of the day assembled with interpretive text.