EXHIBITS

Aurora by Those Who Saw It

SCAP0126-001.pdf
The hotel that took the county name Esmeralda
(Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives, P0126, 1-01.)

“Aurora, almost forgotten save by those who neighbor it, though it was once the mining sensation of the West, municipality of some few thousand inhabitants.”[1]

“The people of the district applied to the California legislature for a new county, Mono, saving a large portion of the citizens from being victims of anarchy or still worse, of being subjected to the hated and oppressive laws of Utah.”[2]

“Aurora, within 8 months of the day of white men seeing [it] became the seat of government of a new county by a state which had no jurisdiction.”[3]

When the county seat left, the people left too. “Sixteen million in production, a very shallow mine.”[4]

[1] W. A. Chalfant, Gold, Guns, & Ghost Towns (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1947), 57.
[2] Chalfant, Gold, Guns, & Ghost Towns, 59.
[3] Chalfant, Gold, Guns, & Ghost Towns, 60.
[4] Chalfant, Gold, Guns, & Ghost Towns, 79.