Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad
| Locale | Mina, Nevada to Goldfield, Nevada |
|---|---|
| Dates of operation | 1905–1947 |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
| Headquarters | Tonopah, Nevada; later, Seattle, Washington |
The Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, a Class II railroad of 100.4 miles in length in the U.S. state of Nevada, offered point-to-point service between Mina and Goldfield, running over the Excelsior Mountains and parallel to the Monte Cristo Range. It operated from 1905 until 1947.
Predecessors of the Tonopah and Goldfield (T & G) Railroad, including the Tonopah Railroad, began operations in 1903. The decade of the 1900s was a period of frenzied railroad-building in southwestern Nevada, with rich silver ore discovered at Tonopah in 1900 and gold-bearing quartz at Goldfield in 1902. In addition, silver was struck at Silver Peak. As the entire region was then served by nothing but stagecoaches, an infrastructure was quickly begun to serve what was a fast-growing network of precious-metal mines and miners. The first predecessor of the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, the Tonopah Railroad (built 1903-1904), was a 60-mile-long narrow gauge line from what was then called Sodaville Junction (9 miles south of Mina) to Tonopah. This spur line merged with the Goldfield Railroad in November 1905 to create the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, and the merged rail line would continue to do business under this corporate name until ceasing operations in 1947.
Investment money poured into the new gold fields, with the merged Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad claiming to have $2,150,000 in equity capital. The T & G began expanding its trackage in 1905 to cover the 31 miles from Tonopah south to Goldfield, and the nine miles north from Sodaville Junction through Sodaville to Mina. The merged railroad also relaid its existing tracks to become a standard gauge road.
With the gold and silver mines in full production, the Tonopah and Goldfield soon had competition from the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad and the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. In addition, the Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad built some right-of-way and leased out its trackage rights to operating railroads. The Tonopah and Goldfield held a brief strategic advantage over its competitors: its northern railhead at Mina was a junction point with the Nevada and California Railroad (N & C), an affiliate line of one of the largest railroads in the West, the Southern Pacific. This made it possible for passengers from the East or West Coasts to travel to the northern end of the Nevada and California spur line by fast Pullman service; the final leg of the journey, from the Southern Pacific main line at Hazen, Nevada over the N & C and T & G to Goldfield, was however very slow. A 1943 schedule indicates that a traveler would have had to expect to take 14 hours to ride the 228 miles from Hazen to Goldfield, over what had by then become a deteriorated branch-line roadbed.
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