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| Prospectors buying supplies in a Goldfield mercantile in the early 20th century. |
Every once in a while, you stumble onto a Nevada-related book that you wonder why you had never encountered it before. Sometimes it’s a book that’s been around for a long time, but never quite crossed your path.
For me, one such book is Frank A. Crampton’s 1956 autobiography, “Deep Enough: A Working Stiff in the Western Mining Camps.”
For some reason, I was not aware of Crampton or his book, until it was mentioned recently on a ghost town blog and piqued my interest. I found a copy of a more-recent reprint of the book and was pleasantly surprised that it was a fun and informative read.
While Crampton was born to a socially-prominent family in New York City, he decided to make his way in the world as a hard-rock miner. One of the first places he works was in the Nevada mining town of Goldfield in the early part of the 20th century.
His descriptions of that mining community’s glory days are descriptive and revealing.
“Goldfield was the last of the great gold boom camps and had about reached the pinnacle of its productive new wealth when I landed there,” he wrote. “In Goldfield were characters from all parts of the world. The hard-rock miners and other working stiffs were the foundation and hard core.”
“There were business men from the East and the Pacific Coasting, wanting to take a flyer, but for the most part being taken,” he continued. “There were promoters whose shrewd manipulations made grubstakes for themselves, but milked dry the savings of the credulous who wanted to become wealthy overnight but lost it all.”
Along the way, Crampton encountered various colorful figures, whose names have become legendary in the Silver State. For example, he knew Shorty Harris, the prospector responsible for the brief boom in a mining camp called Bullfrog.
“Shorty was looking for another Goldfield. He thought he had found it one-time, and so did a lot of others, and a boom got under way at Bullfrog,” he wrote. “Shorty’s gold outcrop at Bullfrog gave out too soon, and with it his boom camp.”
Another famous or infamous figure he knew was Walter “Death Valley Scotty” Scott. Crampton wrote somewhat disparagingly about Scott, who was known for “salting” his mining holdings with bits of gold from other mines in order to attract investors.
During his time in Goldfield, Crampton became a successful assayer and surveyor. He also was a witness to one of the seminal moments in Nevada sporting history, attending the championship fight between Joe Gans and “Battling” Nelson in 1906, which lasted an incredible 42 rounds.
“No fight that I have seen since has equaled it in any way,” he recalled. “It was a fight from start to finish and not once did either man let up trying to knock the other out. Fight fans got more than their money’s worth.”
A particularly interesting chapter in the book is devoted to his brief infatuation with an attractive young woman working in one of Goldfield’s “cribs.” After striking up a friendship with the woman, she suddenly disappears from the camp. Several months later, after Crampton had relocated to Oakland, California, to recuperate from illness, he unexpectedly encounters the woman with her husband. It makes for a fascinating read.
That young woman, in fact, is the reason that Crampton never returned to Goldfield.
“I didn’t want to return to Goldfield. There was nothing there that urged me to return. My experience with the girl of the crib would bring back memories that I preferred to forget. Goldfield would remind me of her,” he wrote.
Ultimately, Crampton was presented with another mining business proposition in California, which he decided to pursue. He sold his Goldfield business and moved on to mining camps in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and other places, before becoming an engineer and prominent political advisor.
“Deep Enough” by Frank A. Crampton remains in print (from the University of Oklahoma Press) and can be found at most online bookstores.
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