Nevada and its mountain Ranges are famous for the silver and gold rushes that started in the 1860s all over the state. This search for precious metal eventually brought future prospectors to a big gulch that was named Manhattan Gulch. It was a place with silver deposits as was indicated by placer mining.
It was 1905 when two cowboys were herding cattle and stumbled upon some ore once again in Manhattan Gulch. It turned out to be worth $3,000 a ton, a very high-grade ore. This discovery resurrected the all but forgotten Manhattan. It turned out that it was rich enough that gold veins were visible running through the rock.
The place turned out to be filled with even more rich ore than the early prospectors ever realized, and so, in 1905 the town was booming once again. Buildings were constructed all over the place and the population increased to a healthy thousand. The town even got itself three banks and people started publishing a newspaper which tells us a lot about the significance and size of the town. Things seemed to get brighter for the town.
In April 1906 a devastating earthquake shook the coast of Northern California to its roots. The magnitude was estimated to be as much as grade 8 and the intensity to be extreme. Once a large city, San Francisco was made into rubble, almost 80% of the city was ruined completely. As if that wasn’t enough, a terrible fire broke out all over the place. This earthquake is one of the most devastating events in US history. It killed over 3,000 people and left even more with no home or means of existence.
How does that concern Manhattan? Well, the town was not that far from San Francisco and suffered for some degree because of the proximity. The town was dependent on investors from San Francisco, as well as suppliers who came from the city to provide much needed material to work the mines. Manhattan was left without resources to expand.
Unexpectedly, many businesses didn’t go bankrupt and remained for a time and some newer discoveries of placer deposits in the Big Smoky Valley prolonged the life of Manhattan. However, it was just a shell of what it was before.
Despite all the early difficulties faced in the early days of Manhattan, there was still lots of precious metals hidden in the hills around town. If you visit today you will see several open pit mining operations to the west of town. These operated over the past few decades and resulted in considerable gold and silver discoveries.
Despite the fact that there are only around 100 people and the town now, it has a small hotel and if you are interested in gold mining processes and the history of American gold prospecting, it will be a great spot to visit.
Many buildings from that time managed to survive despite the considerable damage done by the ravages of time.
The Big Smoky Valley is similar to many of the desert valleys in Nevada, characterized by flanking mountain ranges running north to south. Big Smoky Valley is bounded to the south by Lone Mountain, and the east and west by the Toquima and the Toiyabe ranges, respectively. The valley floor consists primarily of alluvial fans composed of small poorly sorted gravels.
Meta-sedimentary and granitic wastes predominate the Manhattan and Kingston fans while quartz sands derived from granites, predominate in the axial part of the valley between Charnock Springs and Round Mountain and most of the steep slope adjacent to Lone Mountain. Grit derived from Tertiary lavas supplied by the southern part of the Toiyabe and Shoshone ranges is also abundant and widely distributed.
Limestone, slate, schist, and quartzite totaling several thousand feet in thickness and ranging in age from lower Cambrian to Carboniferous are the oldest rocks found in this region. Although they have a wide range in age, no unconformity has been found between two successive formations. Since their deposition they have been extensively deformed, eroded, intruded by lavas, and largely covered by igneous bodies and sedimentary deposits. Originally they probably covered the entire region, but at present they are found over extensive areas only in the Toiyabe, Toquima, Silver Peak, and Lone Mountain ranges.
Igneous rocks in the Big Smoky Valley are predominantly pre-Quaternary. Eruptive formations, consisting of rhyolite and minor amounts of basalt and rocks of intermediate composition with associated tuffs and breccias, are exposed over extensive areas in all of the ranges bordering the valley. They differ widely in age but were probably formed during the Tertiary period. Several great bodies of granitic rock are also found in the valley. They are intrusive in the Paleozoic strata but older than the Tertiary eruptive rocks. A large granite mass occupies the lofty central part of the Toquima Range particularly in the region of Round Mountain. Another granite mass forms the main part of Lone Mountain.
Big Smoky Valley, in the late Pleistocene, was occupied by two large lakes. The lakes were contained in the lowest parts of the northern and southern reaches of the valley and are known as Lake Toiyabe and Lake Tonopah, respectively. Shore features, such as gravelly beaches and embankments still exist in the valley while the former lake sites are presently occupied by alkali flats. Stratified beds of the former lakes are not exposed.
On the eastern alluvial slopes of the Toiyabe Range, there are many escarpments which face the valley and are believed to be due to recent faulting (Meinzer, 1917).
Manhattan experiences a semi-arid climate with short, warm summers and long, cold winters. Manhattan does not have a wet or dry season. Precipitation is distributed equally throughout the year. Due to Manhattan's high elevation, summer high temperatures rarely exceed 90 °F (32 °C). Manhattan's high elevation also makes the diurnal temperature variation substantial. Nights are cool in the summer. While very rare in summer months, Manhattan has experienced temperatures below freezing in every month of the year. Winters are long and can be bitterly cold.
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