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The Old Town Of Blair Nevada

This is the story about the town of Blair Nevada. The location of this town became reality because of greedy land speculators back in the hey days of Nevada when everyone had gold fever.

In the late 1800's there was a lot of action in Nevada after a few stirkes were found. Like all strikes it doesn't take long for ground to get staked up, so prospectors would find themselves having to travel further out from where the big find would have happened. One of those big gold strikes was in Goldfield.

After having little ground to prospect some prospectors headed out west of town and stumbled across a find in the area now known as Silver Peak. Of course with so many prospectors and miners looking to get in on some action, mining claims got expensive real fast. This is when a group of big city investors came in looking to set up a custom stamp mill, but they felt that land was pricey so they moved out a few more miles and set up shop. This became a new town called Blair. The town was named after John Blair, who owned a lot of mining property in the area and lived there for almost forty years. This new town was a huge surprise to people living in Silver Peak to find that brand a new town was being built just a few miles away.

Soon a company was formed called the Pittsburg Silver Peak Gold Mining Company. This company then started construction on building a new stamp mill right away. It didn't take long before people started moving into the area. The town grew quick with the usual shops, stores and saloons. Then a rail line was built that connected Blair with Tonopah and Goldfield. In 1906 a post office was built in the town as well. Within a few short months the population had reached 500 people and by 1908 the population had about 800 residents.

Blair had the biggest stamp mill anywhere in the state at that time. It was a 100 stamp mill and could hammer out a many tons of ore every hour. This mill would run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Gold ore was hauled in from various small mines in the surrounding area. This mill hired dozen of workers providing good paying jobs. For several years the town thrived but around 1915 the ore from the mines was starting to become lower grade as all the rich ores had been mined out. This lower grade ore started to make milling unprofitable and soon the mill shut down. By 1920 the town was pretty much a ghost town as the stamp mill was dismanteled and moved to another location.

There is not much left of the old town of Blair today. There are just some old foundations and skeletal remains of some old buildings.









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