The popular conception was that all the gold was in California, and for a while that was true. Until there wasn't so much gold anymore.

Then eyes - along with picks, shovels, and gold pans - turned east toward Nevada and Utah.

"California's golden flood had been pouring into the world channels of trade for ten years before mineral discoveries known to be important were made in the arid region then called western Utah," writes W.A. Chalfant in Gold, Guns & Ghost Towns.

In 1852 an army lieutenant crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains on a trail through what we now call Tuolumne Meadows. He was in pursuit of Indians who had murdered white men. History does not record his success or failure as a lawman, but it does say that the lieutenant found gold and gold-bearing quartz on the eastern slopes of the mountain range.

Soon Mormons were reported to be washing up gold on the Dogtown Creek near Mono Lake, east of the mountains. Spring of 1857 saw the arrival of a small band of prospectors. By 1859 there were seventy men working on Dogtown Creek and a small store had been established to sell the miners food, alcohol, and cigars.

In due course a Fourth of July celebration was held at the small Dogtown Creek trading center. Wandering away from the drunken revelry, one miner eventually lay down in the shade of a boulder on the slope above Mono Lake to rest. A coughing fit blew the nearby sand around, exposing glittering flakes of gold. In a short time he accumulated more gold than his Dogtown claim could produce in a week.

His news started a run toward Mono Lake and a month later Dogtown stood virtually abandoned with only four men left there.

The new town of Monoville shot up around the new diggins. It quickly grew to a population of 700 gold miners, hoping they had found greener (or more golden) pastures. Approaching cold weather cut the town's population and a November storm covered the region with five feet of snow.

With spring came ditches, sawmills, stores and a post office.

As a mining camp, Monoville "lasted soon" as they said back then. "Other mining discoveries drew away most of its population," Chalfant writes, "almost before the boards in its best buildings had begun to show signs of weathering." Today the only visible mark of what was once largest town of the Western Great Basin is Sinnamon Cut, a ditch that once brought water to blast loose $90,000 worth of gold.

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Copyright Don Baumgart, 2008