The Perfect Monster

by Ellen Hopkins

The chronicle of Virginia City's Comstock Lode silver era is full of tales of incredible wealth and greed, disappointment and disaster. But if it weren't for a perverse twist of fate, the history books would tell not of the Comstock, but of the Grosch Lode.

In 1853, Ethan and Hosea Grosch traveled from the California gold diggings to the sprawling tent town atop Sun Mountain (later Mt. Davidson). Sons of a Pennsylvania minister, the young men had studied chemistry and mineralogy. As they initiated their own search for gold, they began to hear complaints about "the dang blue clay" clogging the rockers of their fellow prospectors. The Grosch brothers recognized the clay as "silver lead." On November 3, 1856, they wrote their father: We have found two veins of silver. One is a perfect monster…

The brothers built a stone cabin with beds in one corner and assaying equipment in another. They valued the ore they had discovered at $3500 per ton. But extracting the silver would be expensive. In June 1857, the Grosches sent ore samples to investor George Brown, who agreed to loan them seed money. But first, he wanted to see the four veins of silver for himself.

In September, Brown was traveling to Sun Mountain when robbers waylaid and killed him for the $600 investment capital he carried. Not long after, Hosea stuck a pick through his foot. It was a superficial wound, but tetanus set in and he died of gangrene.

The deaths devastated Ethan. He borrowed $60, gave his brother the finest funeral Sun Mountain had ever seen, and decided to head back toward the California mines. His plan was to build up a winter stake, then return to work his claim.

Ethan asked Henry "Old Pancake" Comstock to watch over his cabin until spring. Comstock had earned the nickname because of his habit of eating pancakes at every meal. He was a drunk and a braggart, with one pink eye that turned red when he yelled—and that was often.

But Old Pancake wasn't a fool. Something was up at the Grosch brothers' cabin. It was filled with books and beakers, chemicals and journals. And, one night before Hosea died, Comstock had peeked through the cabin window to find the brothers cooking that dang blue clay. Cooking clay? It must mean something.

Comstock agreed to cabin-sit. In return, Ethan promised him a quarter of the Grosch claim. But he didn't confide where—or what—it was.

Ethan and his friend Dick Bucke lit out to cross the Sierra. In good weather, the trip to Sacramento took three days, but that November was temperamental. Near Bigler Lake (Lake Tahoe), a blizzard descended, trapping the men in Squaw Valley.

The snow drifted and the wind bit. They couldn't go on; they couldn't go back. With their matches and powder wet, they had no fire, no ammo. After several days they were rescued, but both had suffered severe frostbite. Bucke survived, minus one leg. Ethan did not.

Back at the cabin, Old Pancake pored over the Grosch brothers' papers, but he couldn't make head nor tails of their cursed scrawls. When news of Ethan's death reached him, he flew into a rage and set fire to the cabin before riding off to plaster his name all over Sun Mountain. Trees. Logs. Boulders. All bore the Comstock moniker. Finally, he stood atop the rock formation known as Devil's Gate, shouting at passersby, "Halt! This is Comstock's Lode!"

And so with cruel irony, the monumental silver strike got its name—and the Grosch brothers' glory was lost to the whims of fate.