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In the spring of 1875, the Brown Brothers, William D. and Robert D. came to the Amargosa country east of Death Valley. They were looking for some good ore, and ore is what they found. In the hill just south of Resting Springs on the Spanish Trail was an immense body of ore, which they named Balance. The silver was running $60 a ton and carried with it a great percentage of lead. The brothers no sooner named their location, and then sold an interest to George Hearst. Hearst had missed buying in at their Darwin discovery. Together they organized the Balance Consolidated Gold and Silver Mining Company. Assuming that after every strike, a town follows. The brothers set in from the start and laid out a townsite on Willow Creek some 6 miles southeast of Resting Springs. The town christened Brownsville (Tecopa) and started a potato and vegetable ranch. Shortly after, they setup a sawmill in the Spring Mountain to the east. That same summer in 1875, Hehemia "Red" Clark built four beehive-shaped charcoal kilns to supply Tecopa with charcoal. The news of the strike was all that was needed to draw Jonas Osborne, who at that time was a mine superintendent in Hamilton, Nevada, into the Resting Springs area. Osborne bought several claims, some running as high as $600 a ton. He soon found out that the bulk of the ore needed smelting. Therefore, Jonas built a smelter and started experimenting to find the best way to work it. By the spring of 1877, he had pretty well figured it out, but was short the capital to build a larger smelting furnace. After finding several Los Angeles bankers to invest, in May 1877 they organized the Los Angeles Mining and Smelting Company with capital of $960,000. Now Jonas being the intermediary, he bought the principle mines in the district and Brownsville as well, giving it the name Tecopa after the local pakwinavi. After several expense efforts at smelting in 1878 Osborne gave up and turned to milling the carbonate ores. Along with the other mines, he had invested in Jonas decided to locate the pulverizer at Resting Springs so 6 miles away. By February of 1879, Tecopa was all but abandon and the new camp was a boom. A flurry of construction started and the new camp had a large stone hotel, several adobe stores and saloons, plus a brand new house for the superintendent Osborne. Then the U. S. Post Office decided to move to and kept the name Tecopa regardless of what the locals called it. The brand new pulverizer turned out to be a large hunk of junk, it never paid to run.
Richard Lingenfelter, page 137 |
