Jarbidge

Jarbidge was the last gasp of the Old West gold rush, in a canyon the Shoshone thought haunted. They named it for Tsawhawbitts, a man-eating giant said to lurk in these mountains; miners mangled the word into Jarbidge. When Dave Bourne found gold here in 1909, the strike touched off one of the last major rushes in the West, and by 1910 some fifteen hundred people crowded the canyon. Fittingly, it also saw the West's last stagecoach robbery, in 1916. The mines yielded about ten million dollars before closing in the 1930s. Jarbidge survives as a living ghost town.

What the plaque says

As early as 10000 years ago, Native American hunting parties camped near horn to hunt game. About a thousand years ago, Shoshone-speaking people entered the region, where they continue to live today. The name Jarbidge comes from a Shoshone word meaning “a bad or evil spirit”. Dave Bourne discovered gold in this isolated area in 1909 and production eventually totaled 59 million. Population size varied, but in the early l920s, the Jarbidge district replaced fading Goldfield as the premier gold-producing area in Nevada. The Jarbidge mines railed beginning in the tale 1920s. On a stormy December 5, 1916, the last stagecoach robbery and murder in the history of the West took place in Jarbidge Canyon, ¼ mile south of the town.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jarbidge — 0.2 mi
  The end of the road, twice over — Nevada's most isolated town, deep in a canyon on the Idaho line, where the West's last gold rush and its last stagecoach robbery both played out.

More markers nearby

• Jarbidge Community Hall — 0.3 mi