El Buscaderos-Cowboy Action Shooting-Feature

Traveling east on interstate 15 about ten miles from the California Nevada state line, turn off on Nipton Road and you have entered the Mojave National Preserve. You are in the New York Mountains. Turn off onto Ivanpah Road heading south and soon you will see the old grade of Issac Blake’s California and Eastern Railroad. This narrow path stripped of its rails and ties will lead you to the former boomtown of Vanderbilt, (or at least where it once was). If you have a period correct G.P.S you'll find it at Vanderbilt 35o 19'50" N 115o15'1"W

A Paiute Indian, Bob Black, spotted ore values in the area and brought them to the attention of “Old Man” Beatty, owner of the ranch at Beatty, Nevada. Several claims located by Beatty were purchased by A.G.(“Green”) Campbell who had made a sizable fortune at Silver Reef, Utah. Campbell named the new property Boomerang and installed a ten-stamp mill brought in from Utah and in a few weeks a boom camp was taking form. Because Cornelius Vanderbilt II was one of the wealthiest men of the day, the founders thought it would be beneficial to name their town after the Eastern tycoon. The town grew rapidly as mining claims blanketed the hills. Several of these including the Gold Bronze, Gold Bar, Boomerang and Bonanza King were producing gold in substantial quantities.

It was Issac E. Blake, a Denver capitalist, Standard Oil executive and owner of a smelter at Needles, that launched the construction of a rail line in the New York Mountains. Named the Nevada Southern, it connected with the Atlantic & Pacific (later to be the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe) at Goffs, thirty miles northwest of Needles. Now connected to the outside world, Vanderbilt’s 3,000 residents settled down to producing gold bullion and making history as reported by the weekly newspaper, The Shaft, edited by Dan Jordan. There were four restaurants and several boarding houses, half a dozen general stores and the same number of saloons, two of which were open twenty-four hours a day. The town had and “orchestra” and a local talent group that periodically presented plays.

In the spring of 1893 Virgil Earp ventured off to Vanderbilt, There, he opened Earp's Hall, sometimes called the Whist Club Saloon, a two-story saloon that had a public hall upstairs for dances, prizefights, and church services on Sunday. Virgil was later described by Vanderbilt acquaintance J.O. Fisk as "a cheerful and agreeable man....In appearance to me, he even looked kind of studious, but he always took part in the dances and get-togethers they had in those days." Fisk also described Virgil as a quiet man who "wouldn't talk much about himself," but who, despite his injured left arm, could handle cards, drinks and hard cases. His house was on of the few rock-constructed homes in the town. Even though Virgil was well liked in Vanderbilt, he lost the election for constable in 1894.

Of course there was a “red light” district and the head Madame was a character known as “Diamond Tooth Lil”. She was known to be pleasant and kind and generous to a fault, as she always helped anyone down on his luck. Most everyone liked Lil and only the finest of Vanderbilt’s ladies looked the other way when she pasted on the street.

“Vanderbilt was strictly a gold camp” as Jim Fisk described. “It wasn’t a high-grade camp either, as compared to Goldfield, Bullfrog or many others. It had come to life when amalgamation was about the only process known for treatment of gold ores, and amalgamation is effective only on so called ‘free gold’---that is ore which has been thoroughly oxidized and the gold contained in its sulphides liberated.

“The oxidized zones at Vanderbilt did not extend to any great depth and soon as the ore had been extracted down to the sulphide zones, treatment by the amalgamation process ceased to be successful. Smelting or concentration-or both- became necessary. Both mills at Vanderbilt tried to work with sulphides, but neither could make much progress. At last, they simply gave it up as a bad job.”