Nevada County Mining Review is one of several contemporary publications that Nevada County businessmen produced in the mid 1890s, with the cooperation of mainly San Francisco but also some local advertisers, to promote Nevada County's flagging economy. The county was still reeling from the economic panic of 1893, and had not yet fully recovered from the prohibition of most hydraulic mining in 1884.

Local quartz mines, while not doing badly, were desperate for capital investment to expand and develop their operations. It fell to local boosterists, linking arms with mining machinery makers and distributors. to promote invest in Grass Valley, Nevada City, and other county mines. Hence the preponderance of ads from San Francisco firms representing mining equipment manufacturers, who could not sell their products to under-capitalized mines.

W. F. Prisk, compiler
Nevada County Mining Review
Published by the Daily Morning Union, Grass Valley, Cal., 1895
San Francisco: Press of Upton Bros.
144 pages, plus 10 pages of advertising

W. F. Prisk (1870-1962), aka William Frederick Prisk, Jr., was born in Grass Valley. He was the editor and publisher of the Daily Morning Union at the time. The book, which he characterized as a "special issue" of the Union, includes 36 full-page photographs, several of them collages of public figures, mines, and homes, plus a similar number of smaller photographs sprinkled throughout the text.

Prisk begins and ends his 1-page "The Object Of It" preface, dated 1 August 1895, on this note of hope, underscored by a cry for help (page 1).

THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of the GRASS VALLEY DAILY MORNING UNION is printed in the interests of the mining industry of Nevada County. It will show that in spite of the dull times which have been prevalent all over the United States, this section is making steady and permanent advancement. . . . [omission] . . . Nevada County is no place for poor people, we have now hundreds of men seeking employment. What we require is the mining capitalist. The mines are here, it requires money to develop them.

A number of other mid-1890s publications similarly appealed to the outside world for investment in Nevada County's future as a center of gold mining, including Nevada City and its Resources Mining Interests and Business Firms (1893), Grass Valley and Vicinity (circa 1895), and Nevada County Mining and Business Directory, 1895 (1895) , all compiled by John Edmund Poingdestre (1854-1931), an Englishman-turned-American who managed the Grass Valley office of the Nevada County Gas and Electric Company, with contributions by Samuel Butler (1865-1920), a local miner turned journalist.

Most but not all pages of Nevada County Mining Review, and of Poingdestre's Grass Valley and Vicinity, are reproduced in David and Ardis Comstock's 1895 Pictorial History of Nevada County, California (2000), which see for a review.

Catalog #: 622.342.NEV
Author: W. F. Prisk
Publisher: Daily Morning Union
Published: 1895
Subjects: Nevada County, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Mining, Economics, Boosterism, 1890s
Related Items:

• 1895 Pictorial History of Nevada County, California (979.437 COM (622.342 NEV, PH 1-4))(2000)
• Pamphlets > Nevada City and its Resources Mining Interests and Business Firms, 1893 (PH 1-2)(1893)
• Pamphlets > Grass Valley and Vicinity (PH 1-4)(Circa 1895)
• Directories > Nevada County Mining and Business Directory, 1895 (650.025.POI)(1895)

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