Columbus

A mill town on the edge of a salt marsh

Columbus sits on the edge of Columbus Salt Marsh, a playa in Esmeralda County with a floor elevation of about 4,511 feet. According to Nevada State Historical Marker No. 20, the town was settled in 1865 when a quartz mill was built here, because the spot was the only stop for miles with enough water to run a mill. Silver had been found in the area a couple of years earlier, and in 1866 a stamp mill was moved to Columbus from Aurora. For its first years the town was a milling point for gold and silver ore from surrounding mines, including the Candelaria district to the north.

Borax years

The marker credits William Troop with discovering borax in the locality in 1871 (some accounts give 1870 and spell the name Troup). Four borax companies were soon working the marsh deposits. The National Park Service’s Death Valley Historic Resource Study names Columbus and Teel’s among the alkaline marshes of western Nevada where borax began turning up in large and purer quantities in the early 1870s, before the industry shifted toward Death Valley and the Mojave.

Columbus is also tied to the early career of Francis Marion “Borax” Smith. A borax plant at Columbus run by Joseph Mosheimer and Emile Stevenot hired Smith to cut wood for it in the Candelaria Hills, and Smith went on to find borax himself at Teel’s Marsh. That success later let him acquire the borax works at Columbus. One 1951 account goes further and credits Smith with the Columbus discovery itself, which conflicts with the marker; the state marker’s attribution to Troop is the one followed here.

Around 1875 the population was reported at about 1,000, and the town had a post office and a newspaper, The Borax Miner. The decline began when the Pacific Borax Company built a larger plant at Fish Lake, about 30 miles south. By 1881 only about 100 people remained, borax work had nearly stopped, and all mining and milling ended shortly after. The post office closed for good in 1899. A flotation mill and a cyanide plant were tried east of the townsite in the 1950s and did not last.

Visiting today

What remains is scattered: foundations, mill remnants, and debris at the marsh edge, plus foundations and tanks from the 1950s mills east of the townsite. There is no permanent population. The town site lies roughly five miles southwest of a viewpoint on U.S. 95 at the northeastern end of the marsh, between Hawthorne and Tonopah, and is reached by dirt roads that one guide describes as needing four-wheel drive. Road conditions on and around a playa change with weather, so check current conditions before leaving pavement and carry water and a spare. The State Historic Preservation Office lists the Columbus marker as missing and on its maintenance list, so do not count on finding it by the highway. Leave foundations, bottles, and other remains where they lie; they are what is left of the town.