Southern Nevada Telephone – Telegraph Company Building

While the mines made the noise, this modest building did the talking. From 1908 it housed Goldfield's telephone and telegraph exchange, the wires that tied the booming camp to the markets and the wider world. When the 1923 fire swept fifty-three blocks of downtown, this was one of the few buildings the flames spared. And it kept its work long after the gold quit—the switchboard stayed in service here until 1963. It survives intact, a quiet record of turn-of-the-century craft and the business of a boomtown.

What the plaque says

This building was the communications center of Goldfield from 1908 until 1963. The Consolidated Telephone-Telegraph Company Building was one of the few spared by a fire that destroyed 53 blocks of the downtown area in 1923. Today, this building survives as an unspoiled expression of the work of turn-of-the-century craftsman, and serves as an example of the business life in the Tonopah-Goldfield area from the years when the mines were producing millions and bringing new prosperity to Nevada. From 1904 to 1910, the gold mines of the region boomed. With more than 15,000 people, Goldfield was the largest city in Nevada during that period, having four railroads and other modern conveniences. The town was damaged by a flash flood in 1913 and mining was in decline, so many people left the area. The fire of 1923 caused the remaining residents to leave. Today the largest employer in Goldfield is Esmeralda County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goldfield — steps away
  Once the largest city in Nevada, now a few hundred souls — the purest boom-and-bust in the West, with a castle courthouse still in use, a grand hotel dark since the war, and a desert full of upended cars.
• Tonopah — 25 mi
  The Queen of the Silver Camps — the 1900 strike that saved Nevada, and the one boom town that never became a ghost: a mine you can walk into, a grand hotel, a clown motel, and the darkest skies in America.

More markers nearby

• Goldfield — steps away
• Gold Point — 19 mi
• Blair — 23 mi
• Lida — 23 mi