Fairview (1905-1917)

Fairview boomed on a 1905 silver strike, in the same fever that built Tonopah and Goldfield, and the Reno magnates George Wingfield and George Nixon bought in early to fan it. At its height the camp held two thousand people and twenty-seven saloons, plus banks, hotels, and two newspapers—yet it had no water of its own, hauled every barrel in, and twice picked up and moved to stay near the veins. The mills ran until 1917. The townsite now lies inside the Fallon naval range, behind fences, occasionally bombed.

What the plaque says

Fairview was part of the renewed interest in mining, triggered by the strikes in Tonopah and Goldfield. Discoveries in 1905 of a rich silver float led to a boom that lasted through 1906 1907. A substantial town that boasted 27 saloons, hotels, banks, assay offices, a newspaper, a post office, and a miner’s union hall soon came into being. By 1908, the boom had passed and production leveled out. During 1911, the Nevada Hills Mining Company began an era of profitable milling that lasted until 1917. Production amounted to 3.8 million dollars in silver values. George Wingfield and George Nixon, prominent Nevada mining promoters of the time, bought some of the first claims in Fairview to give impetus to a boom.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sand Mountain — 9.4 mi
  Nevada's largest dune — a 600-foot mountain of singing sand, a buried Pony Express station, and a butterfly found nowhere else
• Grimes Point — 24 mi
  Hundreds of desert-varnished boulders carved over eight thousand years — the Great Basin's most accessible rock art

More markers nearby

• Wonder — 2.8 mi
• Sand Mountain — 11 mi
• Wagon Jack Shelter — 18 mi
• Pony Express Route- 1860 Sesquicentennial 2010 — 19 mi