Preserving the past: Goldfield being studied as a historic site

GOLDFIELD, Nev. - "Elizabeth? Are you there, Elizabeth?" Virginia Ridgway asks quietly as she walks slowly into Room 109 of the long-closed Goldfield Hotel. "I come with friends."

Ridgway points out a yellow daisy in a vase in the dark room. Elizabeth, she says, will speak through the flower.

"How are you feeling today, Elizabeth?" she asks.

The petals on the flower move slightly. She asks another question. The petals move. A guest asks a question. The petals again move.

This is too eerie. Let's leave. Quickly.

"If something isn't done for Goldfield, all we will have are the ghosts and Goldfield will be a ghost town rather than a near-ghost town," the 76-year-old Ridgway says as she padlocks the hotel door.

Ridgway, a former reporter, Esmeralda County commissioner and antique shop owner, looks out over what once was Nevada's largest city. She sees junk, weeds and buildings that are falling down, and she longs for the town to return to glory.

Goldfield, whose population ranges between 225 and 415 depending on whom you ask, was Nevada's largest city 100 years ago with more than 20,000 residents.

Gold played in the mines and there was talk in 1909 of moving the state Capitol here along U.S. Highway 95, 180 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But a fire in 1923 destroyed 50 city blocks. Goldfield never recovered.

Today, an unlikely ghostbuster has emerged with a plan to make Goldfield far more famous than it ever was in its heyday.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants Goldfield to become a national park, or at least a national historic landmark. Either option could bring a lot of money to restore a town that has been dying longer than anyone can remember.

Not everyone in town is on board with that idea. Some locals think the town has enough rustic charm without the government's help.

Reid induced the National Park Service earlier this year to conduct a preliminary study to determine Goldfield's suitability as a national park.

The Park Service found that nearly all historical structures were privately owned and so its suitability as a national park was unknown. Researchers concluded an additional study would be needed to determine the level of public support for national park status and whether resources were available for acquisition.

But they recommended that Goldfield be nominated as a national historic landmark. Given that status, the Park Service might acquire and renovate some buildings. An interpretative center could be opened to the public.

"I love history," Reid said in a telephone interview. "Most historians will say the last gold rush in our country was in Goldfield. There were union fights there. There was a major prize fight there. There is so much there we need to preserve. Reid intends to introduce a bill for an additional study of Goldfield.

"I don't know yet if what I introduce will be for Goldfield as a national park or historical landmark," he said. "Goldfield would be a terrible thing to lose."

Today what remains in Goldfield are a few restored structures, a lot of run-down century-old buildings, old mobile homes, broken-down cars, shacks and trash.

Greyhound buses no longer stop there.

The site of the lightweight championship fight between Joe Gans and Oscar "Battling" Nelson is now a field cluttered with rubbish.

One would think that residents would be jubilant about Reid's efforts.

Goldfield National Park sounds impressive. But some here distrust the federal government and dislike Reid.

"We are going great," Esmeralda County Commissioner R.J. Gillum said. "We don't want the federal government here."

Gillum contends most local residents were angered by moves in recent years by Reid to create wilderness areas in Esmeralda County.

"If Reid gets what he wants, there go our property rights," he said. "They are going to tell us the style they want for our homes, whether they should be painted brown or some other color."

A bumper sticker over the bar in the Santa Fe Saloon reflects this anti-Reid attitude. "Will Rogers Never Met Harry Reid," it reads, referring to the humorist who said he never met a man he didn't like.

Explosives engineer Ruth Anderson shares Gillum's views. She has restored seven Goldfield buildings and even turned the old Northern Saloon into a quality restaurant.

"People around here don't like Reid," she said. "We like it the way it is. No rules. No hassle. It's a kickback lifestyle. People don't care what you wear, what you do, or where you live. But don't mess with their stuff."

Ridgway is friends with Anderson and Gillum, but finds their views exasperating.

"Anything that promotes Goldfield is good," she says. "We need money. I would like to see a clean, neat town. I don't understand the negativity. You can't get two people here to agree on anything."

Ridgway says opponents of the idea need to read the rules for national historic landmarks, the status she expects Goldfield eventually will gain.

Those rules state that if Goldfield were given landmark status, then there is no commitment that the federal government will acquire residents' property.

Even if homeowners receive a federal grant for building repairs, all they must do is "make their property available to the public under very restricted circumstances," according to the regulations. That means they will open their home or business to public tours a few days a year.

Gillum says he might be persuaded to back a National Park Service presence in Goldfield if he could secure a pledge in writing from Reid that locals will make the decisions and not be prevented from using their property as they want.

Ridgway recognizes there is a strong anti-Reid sentiment in Goldfield and throughout Esmeralda County, but hopes they don't bite the hand that wants to feed them. Reid secured just 34 percent of the vote here in his last U.S. Senate race in 2004.

State Historical Preservation Officer Ron James, who serves on the National Historic Landmark Committee, doesn't want Goldfield residents to hurt themselves with their anti-government argument.

Often the Park Service obtains only a building or two for landmark status and other buildings will be left as they are, in private hands without any restrictions on them, according to James.

"They aren't going to obtain the whole town," he said. "Let's give the town some hope. Take the old high school. Couldn't the federal government fix it up and open it as an interpretative center for what's in Goldfield?"

Reid pointed out that most of the Esmeralda County Commission backs his attempt to revive the community. He is confident that most residents also support his plans for Goldfield.

"What is the alternative? Let all the buildings collapse and the history of Goldfield to fall with them?"

It has been said Goldfield's fabulous mines produced 400 ounces of gold per ton of ore. Today some mines in the Carlin Trend are profitable at a tenth of an ounce of gold per ton.

Legendary fight promoter Tex Rickard owned a saloon in Goldfield and put on the lightweight fight between Gans and Nelson in 1906.

Gans won the fight in the 42nd round when fouled by Nelson, the longest championship fight in history. The white crowd began cheering for Gans, a black man, when it became apparent that Nelson was delivering low blows.

Virgil Earp served as a deputy sheriff in Goldfield and died here in 1905. His better-known brother, Wyatt, was a frequent visitor.

The radical Industrial Workers of the World union organized Goldfield's 4,000 miners, along with maids, dishwashers, restaurant workers and even newsboys. Women, blacks and foreigners were welcomed into the union.

For a time the unions and the Western Mining Federation ran the town before George Wingfield and other mine owners conspired with Gov. John Sparks to break the union.

The mine bosses were irked by the large number of miners who supplemented their $6 to $8 a day wages by "high-grading" or walking out with gold ore in their clothes. They struck after mine owners set up "change rooms" where they were searched before leaving their shifts.

Sparks persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to send 300 federal troops to Goldfield in December 1907. Immediately, wages were reduced and union workers fired.

A federal commission soon determined there had been not enough labor unrest to necessitate sending federal troops to Goldfield.

But Roosevelt let them remain for four months, which gave Sparks time to convene a special legislative session during which a state police force was created to protect mining company interests.

The "Wobblies," as the union members were called, were defeated.

Goldfield residents Eric Matranga and Dominic Pappalardo can see both sides of the issue the town faces.

"Ninety-eight percent of Esmeralda County is federal," Pappalardo said. "We don't want to be restricted from the land."

But Pappalardo mentioned he' not even close to raising all the matching funds required for a $350,000 America's Treasures grant, a federal program for restoring historical structures. He wants to begin restoring the dilapidated high school, closed in the early 1950s.

Without a dollar for dollar match, they won't receive the grant.

Pappalardo realizes how poor Goldfield has become. As a national park or national historic landmark, jobs would be created. Goldfield could become more like Virginia City, another old mining town that exists on tourism, he said.

Matranga added most people here work for the county or state, if they hold jobs at all.

"Rush hour is at quarter to eight in the morning when seven cars pull into the parking lot behind the county courthouse," he says.

He, too, would like to see a larger, more prosperous community.

Most publications today refer to Goldfield as a "ghost town," though residents insist about 225 people reside here. The state demographer puts the population at 415.

Locals say that's because a lot of self-employed Californians have acquired Goldfield post office boxes, trying to escape their state's income taxes.

Elizabeth in the Goldfield Hotel's Room 109 is not counted. She is the most famous of several ghosts said to be lurking in the once splendid 154-room Goldfield Hotel, built in 1908 and purchased for $360,000 in 2005 by Carson City rancher Edgar Roberts in a county auction.

As the story goes, Elizabeth was a maid who was impregnated by Wingfield, the mining baron.

She gave birth to their child in this room. Wingfield threw the baby down a mine shaft and chained Elizabeth to a radiator where her ghost remains.

Wingfield would reap millions from his mines and end up as the most powerful person in Nevada in the first half of the 20th century.

Visitors supposedly still can smell the smoke from his cigars on the fourth floor of the hotel.