Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 048-1 - January 1994 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 8 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-05 06:42:22 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:05:59 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:05:59

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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attention was attuned to the “Fountain of Western Waters,” and he decided to build a replica on the Loma Rica Ranch. The site of the fountain was to be integrated with the existing reservoir system that provided water for the Idaho-Maryland Mine and the ranch. The fountain was outfitted with electricity and an amplified sound system, and a gazebo rising out of the opposite end of the lake was built for MacBoyle’s enjoyment. It is related that after he suffered a stroke that paralyzed one side and left him an invalid, MacBoyle spent much of his remaining six years enjoying the peaceful beauty and serenity of the fountain and lake. Devoted to wildlife and as a sportsman, MacBoyle was an “arch proponent” of conservation, and made the Idaho-Maryland Mine and the Loma Rica Ranch lands into a game Errol MacBoyle. (Nevada County Historical Society photo.) refuge. Thousands of pheasants, quail and partridges were released into the area. MacBoyle was born in Oakland, California on September 28, 1880, and as a child he participated with his parents in the historical 1893 Cherokee Strip land rush in Oklahoma. In 1903 he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, majoring in mining engineering; in Gold Mines of California Jack Wagner said he was “thin and aristocratic in appearance, and a one-time tennis champion.”’ Although “a man of culture,’ he started at the bottom of the mining business as a $3-a-day mucker at the Murchie Mine in Nevada City in 1902, worked briefly at the Gaston Mine, and was a surveyor at the North Star Mine in Grass Valley. He then spent two years at Columbia University in a postgraduate course studying geology. In 1910 MacBoyle was appointed to investigate the Benguet Mine in the Philippine Islands, where he contracted a tropical illness and returned to the United States. This experience produced MacBoyle’s first official report as a certified mining engineer. From 1911 to 1915 he was the reporting engineer for the California State Mining Bureau and wrote authoritative articles on Nevada, Sierra and Plumas counties for the State Mines and Mineral Resources series. In 1915 he became associated with Edwin L. Oliver, Frederick McNear and others in consolidating Nevada County’s Eureka, Idaho, Maryland, Gold Point, Union Hill and adjoining mines. The consolidation was completed in 1919 when the entire group was optioned to the Metals Exploration Company, a New York-based syndicate financed by Harry Payne Whitney. (Whitney was a wealthy financier who acted as guide to Daniel Guggenheim through the silver, lead and copper districts of the western U. S. and Mexico in 1902. A director of the Guggenheim Exploration Company, Whitney funded a South Sea Expedition sent by the American Museum of Natural History to collect birds of Polynesia in 1921-22.) Refinancing the Nevada County properties led to major discoveries. Edmund Kinyon’s The Northern Mines states that several million dollars were spent in the financial recovery of the mining lode and the complete rehabilitation of the mine. “Abandonment of the project was seriously considered” for a time. At that time Idaho Maryland Mines was the operating company and the holding company was known as Idaho Maryland Consolidated Mines, Inc. (Later, in 1935, the two companies were consolidated as the Idaho-Maryland Mines, Inc.) MacBoyle, who was running the Union Hill Mine, had purchased a few shares of Idaho Maryland stock, and he asked Whitney to grant him an option and lease. Whitney did and MacBoyle eventually relocated the lost vein. At the time of MacBoyle’s death in 1949, the Grass Valley Union recalled, “It was, in the vernacular of mining, ‘rough going,’ and there were many who shook their heads in doubt.’” MacBoyle persisted, and he reintroduced the old Cornish concept of the “tribute” system, whereby miners furnished the labor and equipment without being paid a wage. When gold was discovered, the profits were evenly split between miners and the mine. The arrangement with the New York syndicate terminated in 1925 when Whitney died. In 1926 a rich vein of gold ore was discovered that in the next fifteen years produced about $30 million; the addition of the New Brunswick holdings carried total production to more than $40 million, becoming “one of the all-time success stories of the mining world.” But in 1928 MacBoyle was so heavily in debt that only one source of credit remained open to him—a Chinese grocer in Grass Valley, who permitted the desperate miner to charge more than $1,000 worth of groceries (a significant amount in ~ those days). Later, when MacBoyle’s luck changed, het 7 showed his gratitude by giving the grocer “a brand new store,” according to the Sacramento Bee. With the advent of World War II, the War Production Board’s Order L-208 resulted in the closure of all gold mines