Fairview is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in
Churchill County,
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...
, in the United States.
History
Discovery of silver in the area in 1905 led to several claims and the creation of a boom town in 1906. Some of the first mining claims were bought by
George Nixon and
George Wingfield
George Wingfield (August 16, 1876 – December 25, 1959) was a Nevada cattleman and gambler who became a financier, investor and one of the state's most powerful economic and political figures during the period from 1909 to 1932. With future sen ...
, which helped drive the boom.
[ The community took its name from Fairview Peak. Fairview changed locations twice, once to move closer to the mines and mills in which the town's residents worked, and once because the town outgrew the narrow canyon in which the second town was sited.][ and a population of 2000. After 1908, outside interest in the mining camps and town declined, and the newspaper closed. The town stayed prosperous until 1912, and afterwards was abandoned.
Fairview had a post office from April 1906 through May 1919.
Fairview appears on maps as a stop or station for the Pony Express. The location of the station is about 5.7 mile north of the site of Fairview.
Fairview is currently a ghost town. One of the few remnants of the old town is the bank vault from the first town site's bank; the vault can be seen from the nearby Austin-Lincoln Highway.]
1954 earthquakes
A very large earthquake doublet
__NOTOC__
In seismology, doublet earthquakes – and more generally, multiplet earthquakes – were originally identified as multiple earthquakes with nearly identical waveforms originating from the same Epicenter, location. They are now characteri ...
occurred on December 16, 1954. The Dixie Valley/Fairview earthquakes occurred four minutes apart, each with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). The initial shock measured 7.3 and the second shock measured 6.9 . Damage to man-made structures was minimal because the region was sparsely populated at the time, but oblique-slip motion on a normal fault resulted in the appearance of large fault scarp
A fault scarp is a small step-like offset of the ground surface in which one side of a fault has shifted vertically in relation to the other. The topographic expression of fault scarps results from the differential erosion of rocks of contrastin ...
s.
Gallery
File:Fairview and Bermond Station Nevada 1910.jpg, Churchill county map, 1910
File:Famous Nevada Hills Gold Mine.jpg, Transporting ore by wagon, Fairview, c 1906
File:Fairview Nevada miners examining mine 1900.jpg, Prospectors examining mine near Fairview, c 1906
File:Fairview_Nevada_early_1900s_mine_visitors.jpg, Fairview mine visitors, c 1906
File:Pony Express Map William Henry Jackson.jpg, Fairview a stop on the Pony Express route
File:Fault_scarp_near_Fairview_Peak,_Nevada_resulting_from_the_December_16,_1954_earthquake.jpg, Fault scarp near Fairview Peak, Nev., resulting from the earthquake of December 16, 1954. (Photograph by Hugo Benioff.)[
]
References
External links
Fairview
– text and photos. (forgottennevada.com)
Further reading
*
{{Churchill County, Nevada
A
Pony Express stations
Ghost towns in Churchill County, Nevada
Ghost towns in Nevada