In 1906, for the first time since the 1860s, Honey Lakers were excited about mining in Nevada.  Of course, one Honey Laker, E.C. Brown had done very well in Goldfield. It was not the new mining discoveries of Goldfield and Tonopah, but one due east of the Honey Lake Valley on the eastern edge of the Black Rock Desert–Rosebud, in Pershing County.

It all began in August 1906 when three prospectors from Goldfield, Nevada discovered a gold vein in the Kamma Mountains that purportedly assays ranged from $1,500 to $30, 000 per ton. A mineral report issued from Humboldt County would later state: “This was followed by a senseless boom, in which, as usual, folly played eagerly into the hands of fraud.”

Whatever, the case may be, a large contigent of Honey Lakers, or in other words, a who’s who of the region could be found there: Frank Cain operated the largest saloon; George Long ran a stage between Rosebud and Susanville; Bud Heap of Pioneer fame a restaurant; Jim Elledge, George Dobyns, John Holmes, Jim McClelland, Wallace Fulton, Frank Dixon, Charles Adams, B.F. Gibson and an assortment of others as miners in search of gold. At its peak in 1907, there 900 residents located there. By 1908, the boom had ended. In a fourteen year period ending in 1920 only $59,473 in minerals (gold, silver, copper and lead) had been extracted.

As one person wrote back in the day, “Consequently, the town, which sprang up before the existence of any considerable body of ore was assured, is now nearly deserted, and the winds whistle through unglazed windows of its most pretentious buildings, abandoned before completion.”

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