ANOTHER CENTENNIAL IN
GOLDFIELD'S HISTORY
BY JIM PRICE
PAGE 1
But I’m getting ahead of the story. This year, 2005, marks the Centennial of the first train to arrive in Goldfield. The actual date was Sept. 12, 1905; the place was just west of the intersection of today’s US Highway 95 and Aluminum St. Imagine the thrill as Goldfield Railroad engine #1, a shiny new Baldwin steam locomotive, chugged into town from Tonopah! The town went wild with Railroad Days celebrations, culminating in a “last spike” ceremony two days later.
To set the stage for this event, we head north to neighboring Tonopah. The start of Tonopah’s boom, 1900, preceded Goldfield’s by about 3 years. But it took until July 23, 1904 for the arrival of the first train into Tonopah – via a link to the Carson & Colorado Railroad at a point south of Mina. That was the Tonopah Railroad. Not surprisingly many of the same prime movers of that railroad soon formed a syndicate, separate from the Tonopah Railroad, to start plans for an extension to Goldfield. That became the Goldfield Railroad. Inevitably, the two were combined into the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad in November, 1905.
T&G was a major presence for many years in Goldfield – a depot, initially at the spot mentioned above and later in Columbia north of the Goldfield town limits; and a major rail facility north of Aluminum Street between North Main and Broadway, complete with an 8-stall roundhouse, turntable, and freight yard. And for a short time, T&G was the only rail service out of Goldfield.
But Goldfield needed a railroad to the south, too. As luck would have it, the rich strike in Rhyolite in 1905 caused considerable enthusiasm to build a railroad to that camp, and with Goldfield booming only 60 miles north, a link between the two became a certainty.