Marietta, Nevada, was a town in
Mineral County, Nevada
Mineral County is a County (United States), county located in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 4,554, making it the fifth-least populous county in Nevada. Its county seat is Hawthor ...
. It is now 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 ...
.
History
The area was extensively prospected by the well-known prospector
F.M. "Borax" Smith, and
Teel's Marsh
Teel's Marsh is a playa in Nevada, United States. It was the site of "Borax" Smith's first borax
The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950 ...
near Marietta is often credited with providing Smith his start in the
borax
The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho. business (having earlier been a more common silver and gold prospector).
[Hildebrand, GH. (1982) Borax Pioneer: Francis Marion Smith. San Diego: Howell-North Books. ] However, before Smith came to the area it had been periodically mined for salt, which was used in the processing of ore in the
Virginia City
Virginia City is a census-designated place (CDP) that is the county seat of Storey County, Nevada, United States, and the largest community in the county. The city is a part of the Reno– Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Virginia City dev ...
,
Aurora, NV, and
Bodie, CA mills. The use of camels to transport salt to Virginia City has often been quoted, although there is some dispute whether this actually took place. Mule teams were the more usual method of transporting the salt. F.M. Smith began serious scraping and processing of the borax and salt deposits starting in 1872, mainly from deposits on nearby Teels Marsh.
Marietta was formally established as a town in 1877, and soon contained several hundred people. Exact figures are hard to verify, because many of the workers involved in the scraping process, and at the processing plant on Teels Marsh were Chinese, whose population figures were not accurately kept. The town soon boasted 13 saloons, a post office, several stores (including the one owned and operated by 'Borax' Smith), and many stone and adobe structures. Marietta was a rowdy camp, despite its size, and seemed to garner more than its fair share of criminal activity. The stage service working to and from Marietta was reportedly robbed 30 times in 1880, within one week of that year alone it was robbed 4 times. The town's isolated site made it an easy target for robberies, and for criminals to run freely.
Despite the crime, scraping the marsh and processing the borax and salt was very lucrative, as was some small amount of gold and silver mining nearby. For the better part of 20 years Marietta soldiered on. However, starting in the early to mid 1890s, the markets for borax and salt had expanded from the central and western area of Nevada to the growing markets in southern California. F.M. Smith had found much larger and more extensive borax deposits in the
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is thought to be the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, hottest place on Earth during summer.
Death Valley's Badwat ...
, California area, and once he had established his works there, he closed down his operations in Marietta. With this source of income gone, the town quickly faded, and was largely abandoned by the early 1900s. In the 1930s some work in the nearby ranges in silver and gold operations saw a brief resurgence in the town, but this did not last long, and Marietta again slipped into obscurity. There was yet another spate of activity in the 1950s and 60's, with the location of small amounts of
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...
ore in the area, but it was never found in large quantities, and large scale activity was never undertaken.
In the past 20 years there has been sporadic mineral exploration in the area. The newer industrial buildings in Marietta are mostly from this activity. A few people live in the area as caretakers. One recent exploration company is The Great Western Mining Corporation, an Irish based exploration company, which concentrates on gold, silver and uranium exploration in the Little Huntoon Valley area near Marietta. Visitors to the site of Marietta should take care not to enter or trespass on any of these private properties while exploring the ruins of the town.
Since 1991 the area is a federally (
BLM) managed Wild Burro Range. This range, which includes the site of Marietta and Teels Marsh, is home to about 85 burros. Small groups of the burros can often be found roaming among the ruins of Marietta.
Location
Marietta is at , at an elevation of 4947 feet (1508m).
See also
*
List of ghost towns in Nevada
Most ghost towns in Nevada in the United States are former mining boomtowns that were abandoned when the mines closed. Those that were not set up as mining camps were usually established as locations for mills, or supply points for nearby mini ...
References
* Stanley W. Paher (1999) ''The Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps Illustrated Atlas, Volume 1: Northern Nevada: Reno, Austin, Ely and Points North'' (Las Vegas: Nevada Publications).
External links
GhostTowns.Com: ''Marietta, Nevada''Marietta on Google Maps
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Ghost towns in Mineral County, Nevada
Populated places established in 1877
Ghost towns in Nevada
1877 establishments in Nevada