Mining Camp Days

From the historian's point of view, this volume is a triumph of good judgment: Emil Billeb's in writing it around the bonanza of illustrative material he has gathered during the years; the publisher's in recognizing the value of this first-hand account of the Great Basin's twentieth century boom camps and mining operations, a colorful but much neglected era of Western history. His personal odyssey began on Wall Street and ranged through boom town after boom town to San Francisco. Bodie, Tonopah, Goldfield, Thorne, Mono Mills, Aurora, Benton, Bridgeport, Ludly and Broken Hills come alive from the grayness of six decades, or even less, and the reader joins Emil Billeh and his fellow Argonauts in a swirl of mining stocks, kited checks, claim jumping, mine promotions and cantankerous railroading that caught and held their fancy.