Tag: Nevada

Nevada, often referred to as the “Silver State,” is located in the western United States. Renowned for its vast deserts and striking mountain ranges, the state boasts a diverse landscape that includes the arid Mojave Desert in the south and the forested Sierra Nevada mountains in the west. The state is famously home to Las Vegas, a vibrant city known for its bustling casinos, entertainment venues, and nightlife. Beyond the glitz of Las Vegas, Nevada offers rich history in its ghost towns, a legacy of the 19th-century mining boom. The state also features significant natural attractions, such as Lake Tahoe and Great Basin National Park, offering a wide range of outdoor activities. Nevada’s economy is driven by tourism, mining, and, increasingly, technology, making it a dynamic state with a blend of natural beauty and modern attractions.

James Crysanthus Phelan – Rhyolite Shopkeeper

Posted on by
James Crysanthus Phelan
James Crysanthus Phelan

James Crysanthus Phelan was a business man and early pioneer of the desert southwest, who like many others followed the boom towns west. Early in his life, he owned a series of butcher shops in various towns throughout the south west, including Rhyolite. It is believed that his butcher shop was located on Golden Street across the street from the Cook Bank Building and near the Porter Brothers Store.

Biography

The automobile garage owned by James C. Phelan, and named after him, is cleverly planned, well built, and managed according to up-to-date methods. Mr. Phelan’s father, who was an honored veteran of the Union Army in our Civil War, is D. F. Phelan, and he is still living at Los Angeles.

Prior to casting his lot in the Golden State, he was a pioneer in Colorado. Mrs. Phelan, who was Annie Donahue before her marriage, is deceased. Born in the Centennial State on October 25, 1867, James C. Phelan was educated at the public schools in Colorado and New Mexico, and also, as he likes to put it, in ” the great school of experience.”

As a young man, he ventured in both the grocery and butcher business, having a store when only nineteen years of age, at Albuquerque, N. M. For fourteen years, too, his business at Williams, Arizona, was one of the most progressive and profitable establishments in that town. On September 9, 1893, Mr. Phelan was married to Miss Myrtie Dickinson, and this union was blessed with three boys and four girls, viz : Mary M., Chris E., Roy N., Jimmie J., Ruth E., Bernice L., and Leoma C, all of whom were educated in the public schools of Fresno, the two eldest studied at Heald’s Business College, while Roy N., is a student at the University of California at Berkeley.

Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite Nevada, Photo marked 1908 and "Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society"
Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite Nevada, Photo marked 1908 and “Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society”

Mr. Phelan has accepted the doctrines of the Christian Scientists, socially he finds recreation in the circles of the Woodmen of the World, the Knights of Pythias, and the Young Men’s Christian Association. In May, 1916, he built the finest and most complete auto establishment in California, spending $90,000 upon the same. He then became agent, for the San Joaquin Valley, of the Maxwell, Mitchell and Marmon automobiles, and the Kleiber and Maxwell Trucks. He employs from forty to fifty men to man the several departments, each of which is complete in itself.

When he first came to California, in 1905, he worked for three years on the Fresno ranch ; and then, getting into the automobile business in a modest way, he has made success after success. Mr. Phelan sold out in August. 1919. Mr. Phelan is a stanch Democrat, but always something more than a political partisan. In advocating and working for good roads, for example, his public-spiritedness has been particularly shown.

References

Christian Brevoort Zabriskie

Posted on by

Christian Brevoort Zabriskie was a vice president and general manager Pacific Coast Borax Company located in Death Valley National Park. Zabriske served the Pacific Coast Borax Company for some thirty six years, and due to this activity is honored by the naming an Zabriske Point.

Christian Brevoort Zabriskie
Christian Brevoort Zabriskie

Christian Brevoort Zabriskie (1864–1936) was born at Fort Bridger in the Wyoming Territory. After schooling, he worked for the Virginia & Truckee Railroad located in Carson City, Nevada. For a time, he relocated to Candelaria, Nevada at work for the Esmeralda County Bank. He briefly venture into the mortuary business with a partnership formed with a local cabinet maker. His lack of knowledge in the art of embalming was not considered a liability as burial speed was a huge priority.

In 1885, at the age of twenty one, Zabriske was hired by Francis Marion “Borax” Smith to supervise the Chinese laborer’s. These men worked for the Pacific Coast Borax Company is the Columbus Marsh located near Candelaria. During his thirty six year tenure with the Pacific Coast Borax Company, the company closed up Candelaria operations and relocated to Death Valley to increase production. The company also expanded into the Calico Mountains and Trona, California

Zabriskie Point named for Christian Brevoort Zabriskie - Photo by James L Rathbun
Zabriskie Point named for Christian Brevoort Zabriskie – Photo by James L Rathbun

Zabriske retired from the Pacific Coast Borax Company in 1933 as Vice President and General Manager. All of his work in Death Valley took place before the area was designated National Monument. He passed away just three years later, on February 8thm 1936 at the age of 71. He is buried in Carson City, Nevada.

Zabriske Point is named to honor the man for his many years of service to the Pacific Coast Borax Company.

References

John S Cook

Posted on by
John S Cook overseeing bars of gold bullion. Photo Goldfield Historical Society
John S Cook overseeing bars of gold bullion. Photo Goldfield Historical Society

John S. Cook (1870–1945) was a Nevada banker whose vision and investments helped define the brief but spectacular boom of Rhyolite, one of the American West’s most iconic gold-rush ghost towns.

Born March 28, 1870, in Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, to John R. Cook and Louisa Stimmel, he grew up in the Midwest before heading west in search of opportunity. By 1898 he had reached Arizona, where he married Jesusita Moreno (also known as Jessie or Susie) in Globe. Census records show him working as a bank cashier in Austin, Nevada, by 1900. His big break came when he was hired as cashier for George Nixon’s bank in the booming mining town of Tonopah.

In January 1905, Cook and his brother launched the John S. Cook & Company Bank in the even hotter Goldfield mining district. It began in a modest wooden shack next to the Palace Saloon before moving into the more substantial Nixon Block Building. Deposits quickly reached $5–6 million as the bank financed mining claims tied to investors like Nixon and George Wingfield. Cook was remembered as a man of quiet disposition—courteous, precise, and thorough in business methods.

That same year, as word of rich gold strikes spread to the Bullfrog district just east of Death Valley, Cook opened a branch in the brand-new camp of Rhyolite. The first location was a rented storefront on Main Street. Rhyolite exploded from a few tents in 1904 to a town of roughly 10,000 people by 1908, complete with electricity, railroads, hotels, and an opera house. Sensing permanence, Cook purchased a prime lot at the southwest corner of Golden and Broadway streets. Construction on the Cook Bank Building began in spring 1907 and finished in January 1908 at a cost of nearly $90,000 (the equivalent of roughly $3 million today).

The three-story steel-and-concrete structure was the tallest and most luxurious building in Rhyolite—and one of the grandest in southern Nevada. It featured Italian-marble stairs and flooring, rich mahogany woodwork, imported stained-glass windows, two massive vaults, indoor plumbing, electric lights, telephones, and steam heat. The bank occupied the first floor, the U.S. Post Office moved into the basement in 1908, and brokers’ offices filled the upper stories. To residents and visitors alike, the Cook Bank symbolized Rhyolite’s transformation from tent city to thriving metropolis.

Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite Nevada, Photo marked 1908 and "Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society"
Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite Nevada, Photo marked 1908 and “Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society”

The optimism proved short-lived. The national financial panic of October 1907 triggered runs on banks across the country. In Goldfield, depositors emptied other institutions, but Cook’s bank survived—largely because saloon owner Rickards publicly deposited gold and silver bars back into Cook’s vaults, visibly reassuring the public. It was the only Goldfield bank to remain open. Yet Rhyolite’s mines could not weather the downturn. Production faltered, jobs vanished, and the population collapsed. By 1910 the Rhyolite branch had closed; Cook sold off the building’s elegant fixtures, and the grand structure stood empty.

In 1909 George Wingfield bought out Cook’s interest in the Goldfield bank to consolidate control. Cook relocated north to Reno, where he continued working for the Cook banking chain. The empire endured until the Great Depression; Wingfield’s banks, including those bearing Cook’s name, failed in 1932. John S. Cook spent his later years in Arizona and California, working variously as a vice president and bookkeeper. He died in Los Angeles County in July 1945 and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

Today, the roofless, sun-bleached concrete shell of the Cook Bank Building remains Rhyolite’s most photographed ruin and one of Nevada’s most recognizable ghost-town landmarks. It has appeared in films ranging from silent-era Westerns to The Island (2005). Its hollow windows frame the desert mountains, a stark monument to the boom-and-bust cycle that defined the early-20th-century mining West—and to the banker who, for a few heady years, bet everything on Rhyolite’s future.

The building’s ruins at sunset or under stormy skies still draw thousands of visitors each year, serving as a silent testament to John S. Cook’s brief but indelible role in Nevada history.

References

Cook Bank Building

Posted on by

The Cook Bank Building is the most iconic image and popular images of the Rhyolite ghost town, in Nye County, Nevada. When John S. Cook built his bank to three stories, it inspired John Overbury to add a third floor to his Overbury building located just down Golden Street. The structure is centrally located in the remains of the town, and photographically, very interesting. Partially for this reason, the structure is a common choice for filming locations, and even appeared in an Alanis Morissette music video.

Rhyolite, Nevada photo by James L Rathbun
Rhyolite, Nevada photo by James L Rathbun

The Cook Bank is to most iconic building in Rhyolite and one of the most photographed ruins in Nevada.

John Cook and his brother started the John S. Cook & Company Bank in Goldfield, Nevada in January 1905. Later that same year the opened a new branch in Rhyolite. The banks first location was in a rented building on Main Street. After buying a lot on Golden Street, construction of the Cook Bank Building in the spring of 1907.

One of four banks in Rhyolite, the Cook Bank Building was by far the finest. Build of poured concrete, the building was three stories tall and had a basement that housed the Post Office. The interior was finished with marble staircases and mahogany accents. It also boasted modern conveniences such as electric lights and indoor plumbing

Despite its opulence, the Cook Bank was open less that two years. In the summer and fall of 1907, a financial crisis, often referred to as the Knickerboxer Crisis, caused banks across the country to go bankrupt. By 1910, the Cook Bank was closed and John Cook had sold off all of the building’s fixtures.

Since the closured of the Cook Bank, the building has appeared in many movies including: The Air Mail, The Arrogant, Cherry 2000, The island, Delusion, Ramona!, The Reward, Wanderer of the Wasteland, Six-string Samurai, Rough Rider’s Round Up, Bone Dry, Ultraviolet and more..

BLM Plaque – Rhyolite, Nevada
Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite Nevada, Photo marked 1908 and "Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society"
Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite Nevada, Photo marked 1908 and “Courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society”

Cook Bank Building Map

References

Porter Brothers Store

Posted on by

The Porter Brothers store is a ruined storefront on the main street in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nye County, Nevada. The Porter Brothers were like many other merchants, following and chasing the latest news of gold strikes and boom towns. The Porter Brothers built their building in 1906 at a cost of $10,000 and it close four years later, in 1910.

Porter Brothers store front in Phyolite, Nevada - Photo by James L Rathbun
Porter Brothers store front in Rhyolite, Nevada – Photo by James L Rathbun

Like many merchants of the time, the Porter Brothers, Hiram and Lyman, moved from mining camp to mining camp, following reports of booms and strikes.

In 1902, the opened a painting business in San Francisco. Following the rich gold strikes in southern California, they opened mercantiles in Johannesburg, Ballarat (near Death Valley), Beatty, and, or course, Rhyolite.

Originally, the brothers bought lot on Main Street in 1905 and operated out of a canvas tent, but they soon ran out of room. They then bought a second lot on Golden Street, next of many of Rhyolites important commercial buildings.

Construction of their new building began in 1906. It used local stone and took four months at a cost of $10,000.

Before moving their operations from Main to Golden, they threw a huge three-day sale and held a public date, complete with an orchestra, in the new finished Golden Street building.

The Porter Brothers Store was very popular. In 1906, it was the go-to destination for Christmas shopping. This was due to its amazing displays that rivalled those of the major cities. In fact, the store was the largest employer in Rhyolite aside from the mines.

Unfortunately, even the popular store was not immune to the downturn that would decimate Rhyolite’s businesses; it closed in 1910. Hiram, however, would stay in Rhyolite another nine years, serving as the town’s postmaster until the post office closed on September 15, 1919.

BLM Plaque – Rhyolite, Nevada

Porter Brothers Store Front Sign, Rhyolite, Nevada. Photo by James L Rathbun
Porter Brothers Store Front Sign, Rhyolite, Nevada. Photo by James L Rathbun

Porter Brothers Store Map