Manhattan

Prospector John Humphrey found gold here on April 1, 1905, and named his claim the April Fool — but the strike was real, and within weeks the camp held four thousand people. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the panic that followed scattered them almost as fast; then the mines came back in 1909. Manhattan became Nevada's second-richest placer district, and from 1939 to 1947 a giant dredge, the Big Boat, chewed up the gulch for gold the early miners had missed. When the boom faded, the town borrowed Belmont's old church, hauled over the hills in 1908.

What the plaque says

MANHATTAN – “THE PINE TREE CAMP” The Manhattan Mining District northeast of here was first organized in 1867. The place name persisted in local use and was adopted in 1905, when John Humphrey found gold at the foot of April Fool Hill near the old stage route. A typical boom followed. A post office opened late in 1905 and the camp soon had a telegraph, and telephones, utilities, and businesses. Transport was to Tonopah and the railroad at Sodaville. The 1906 earthquake halted mining investment. As a result, most of the productive work here was done by lessees. The gold strikes were in ore and placer deposits, and by 1909, there were thirteen mines and sixteen placers. Some of the operations were the big four: Litigation Hill Merger, Stray Dog, September Fraction, and White Caps. Hydraulic placering started in 1909. In 1938, dredging began and continued for thirteen years. Over $10,000,000 was produced.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — 32 mi
  A gold camp frozen in "arrested decay" since 1911, beside a quarry of fifty-foot ichthyosaurs left in the rock where they died — the Silver Trails' long exhale into deep time.

More markers nearby

• Round Mountain — 11 mi
• Big Smoky Valley — 15 mi
• Belmont — 17 mi