Beautiful certificate from the
Manhattan Consolidated Extension Mining Company issued in 1907. This historic document has an
ornate border around it with a vignettes of mining scenes. This item has the signatures of the Company’s President, Gurney Gordon and Secretary, R L Colburn.
Certificate Vignette
Article printed in AUGUST, 1906 from "SUCCESSFUL AMERICAN
PORTAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES OF PROMINENT ENGINEERS, MINERS AND BUSINESS MEN OF NEVADA"
ALGERNON WILBUR GORDON (Gurney Gordon)
President of the Manhattan Consolidated Extension Mining Company of Goldfield
It is a fact that mining is the greatest of all creative
industries, and it may truly be added that to it is directly
due the nation's present prosperity. It was indeed the
immense treasure-houses of California gold and
Nevada which enabled this nation to triumph in the
sixties in the longest, bloodiest war of modern times, and
rendered possible quick recuperation from the
exhaustive struggle. It was the mines of California that
caused the speedy settlement of one of the most
productive States Of the Union, and the same cause is
responsible for transforming the vast plains and desolate
hills of Nevada into hives of industry.
Among the early pioneers of this great transformation,
and one who brought with him skill and experience
developed in other mining districts, is the subject of this
sketch ; and for his good work in this respect he has
realized, deservedly prosperous results, and we take
great pleasure in giving him due honor with other sturdy
pioneers, whose biographical sketches appear in the
current number of SUCCESSFUL AMERICAN.
Of Scotch-English descent, the subject of this
sketch, familiarly known as Gurney Gordon, (and,
as a matter of fact, in all business transactions he so
signs his name), was born at Warren, Ohio, on
November 24, 1874. He is a son of Zachariah and
Ann Maria Gordon, his father being a noted farmer
of the Buckeye State. He is a nephew, on his
mothers side, of J. E. Pickering, for many years a
leading judge of the District Court of Ohio.
Mr. Gordon received a liberal education in public
schools and other institutions of learning in
Nebraska, obtaining thereat a technical knowledge
of mining which when the opportunity come to put it
to a practical test resulted in great advantage to him
in after life. His first venture in mining and prospecting
was in Montana, where he made a business
of examining mines, reporting on them, and operating
them. His stay in Montana was productive of
very satisfactory results. He acquired a one-half interest
in what is known as the Top Hand Group of
Mines, his brother owning the other half, and he also
owns a one-third interest in the Tenderfoot Mine.
Both of these properties are near Pony, about sixty
miles from Butte, and have been rich producers of
ore.
In Goldfield, Nev., Mr. Gordon is interested in the
Rep Top Mine, in the development of which he had
as co-operators W. E. Hughey, C. D. Taylor, R. L.
Colburn, and H. L. Taylor, and he is President of the
Manhattan Consolidated Extension Mining Company
; President also of the Round Mountain Red
Top Mining Company, and Vice-President and
General Manager of the Fairview Gordon Boulder
Mining Company, of Fairview, some of the samples
of which run nearly two-thirds pure gold. Fairview,
in Churchill County, is indeed the location of some
of the richest strikes in the history of Nevada.
Mr. Gordon is a gentleman of great generosity of
nature. He belongs to that class of men who receive
friends with a quiet cordiality which is thoroughly
sincere in every respect, and which means no more
and no less than is outwardly exhibited. Such are the
qualities of a true gentleman. Mr. Gordon is an old
member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
and is a charter member of the Montezuma Club of
Goldfield, the leading club of that now far-famed
mining district.
RICHARD LINCOLN COLBURN
Another of Fortune’s Favorites in the
Gold Region of Nevada.
RICHARD LINCOLN COLBURN, son of Rev.
Nathaniel Wesley and Mary Elizabeth (Johnson)
Colburn, is a native of Mifflinsburg, Pa., and was
born on May 11, 1866. On his father’s side he is of
English descent. His mother was from old Puritan
stock.
Owing to the change of abode incident to
a minister’s family, young Colburn had a sort
of piecemeal education in several localities ; but
he was an apt scholar as well as an ambitious
lad, and when he reached his fifteenth year, he
started out like a brave boy to earn his livelihood,
and his first venture was as assistant ticket agent
for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Newport,
Pa., and later on he entered the employment of the
Lehigh Valley Railroad Company at Packertown,
Pa.
Before long the possibilities of the Empire City
loomed up before his eyes, and going to New
York he became an employee of the banking firm
of Harvey Fisk & Sons on Wall Strtreet.
During 'eleven years' service in that capacity
he gained, besides many educational advantages, large
financial experience and felt himself fully qualified to
face the "wild and woolly West," where all the gold with
which he had been so long surrounded came from, and
thus he became interested in mining at Salt Lake City,
Utah, but he did not there find that realization of
bright hopes which he had expected, for, while his
abilities enabled him to make money he struck “a hard
streak of luck,” and when, in 1903, the marvelous
discovery of gold in Goldfield, Nev., reached his
hearing, he was not slow in making a start for that
locality, where Dame Fortune gave him a most gracious
welcome.
Mr. Colburn does not hesitate to tell those
who know him how hard up he was when he changed his
location from Salt Lake City to Goldfield. “I was down
and out,” he says. “My bankers in Salt Lake City were
T. R. Jones & Co., and when they went broke, I went
with them. The securities that I had left depreciated in
value, until I found myself $17,000 in debt to Salt Lake
bankers. But I still had a diamond ring and on that I
managed to borrow $110, which brought me
to Goldfield.”
If Mr. Colburn had no money, he at least had vim and
vigor, and what was better still, a knowledge of mines
and mining. Luck was with him from the time he set foot
in Goldfield. He began by locating claims all over the
district. He had them near the Black Butte and
Quartzite mines at one end of the golden horseshoe
that marks the outline of the Goldfield mining country ;
he had them on Columbia mountain, at the bend of the
horseshoe ; and he had still others near the Dixie, at the
other end. He staked them out and did all the assessment
work himself. Some of them he sold for little or nothing,
and these have since become worth millions. But that is
part of the chance a bankrupt man has to take in a
mining camp. But, as the habitues of the mining district
say, he came out "hunk."
Mr. Colburn's mining experiences is so
interesting that we cannot resist adding in his own
words his brief recital of the "streak of good luck”
he had in Nevada as an offset to his experience in Salt
Lake City.
“I was out on Lone Mountain,” he says, “looking after
a piece of property for people in Salt Lake City. We had
camped, and while there two men came up and wanted
to pitch their bunk with us. We had no room in the tent,
but told them they could put their bed at the side to
shelter them from the wind. They were Charles D.
Taylor and George McClellen, now the owners of the
rich Jumbo mine.”
“Later on, while coming in from that section with
a mule team, I overtook a man plodding along the
dusty road with a pack on his back. He had been to
Cloverdale, and on his return trip his horse had
broken down. To save his own life he had started to
walk in. It was Taylor again, and I helped him into
camp. When I next met him he was going to
prospect out in the Grandpa district, and said: “All I
need is $50 to buy grub. If you will let me have it,
I will give you half of all I get. As a matter of fact, I
didn't have the money. But he managed to get it
elsewhere. If I had been able to stake him then, I
would have had an interest in the Jumbo, to-day
worth a million.
“There was little luck for me, however, after that.
When I met Taylor again for the third time, he had
located his claims but had not had them surveyed
because he did not have the ready money. I said I
and my partners would survey them for an interest.
He jumped at the proposition and we surveyed all
the claims of the great Jumbo group. Meanwhile we
prospected over the ground to see what part we
should take for ours, and we selected the Red Top,
for which Taylor had paid only $35. We took half of
that claim in payment for the surveying, and I
guess we could have had the whole of it for the
asking. I got 100,000 shares for my part when the
company was incorporated and the same amount
went to each of my partners. I am inclined to
think we were pretty well paid for our work.
But somehow I still regret my lack of that $50
and the Jumbo.”
Mr. Colburn, it is almost needless
to say, is now very comfortably fixed. He is
Secretary and Treasurer of the Red Top Mining
Company of Goldfield, the Manhattan Consolidated
Extension Mining Company, the Round Mountain
Red Top Mining Company, the Hill Top Mining
Company of Bullfrog, and President of the Goldfield
Bullfrog and is also interested in a number
of other propositions in Southern Nevada and
the Kimberly group of claims in the Fairview
district. R.L. (Dick) Colburn is also the founder of R.L. Colburn & Company, Bankers & Brokers of Goldfield, Nevada.
Mr. Colburn, who was a member of the
Republican Club of New York, while in that city,
is now a member of the Atlas Club of Salt
Lake City, the Mizpah Club of Tonopah, the
Montezuma Club of Goldfield, and the Olympia
Club of San Francisco ; and he is also a member of
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
Mr. Coburn was married in San Francisco on
May 31, 1905, to Miss Rose Estelle Butler.