Law and Order in the Mining Town of Aurora

In 1984, Roger D McGrath published his book Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, giving a graphic account of law and order in the Nevada gold-mining towns of Aurora and nearby Brodie. 

The Growth of Aurora

Gold was discovered in Aurora in August 1860.  By November 357 claims had been registered and by February 1861 some 800 people had arrived and the town had 100 buildings, including two stores, six warehouses, two meat markets, four blacksmiths, two bakeries and two carpenters.  By April 1861 the town had 20 businesses and 400 houses and 50 people a day were arriving – one of them the future novelist Mark Twain. 

By 1863, when the town was incorporated, it had 800 houses, two daily newspapers, two stage lines and some 5,000 inhabitants … of whom only perhaps 250 were women (half of them prostitutes) and just 80 children.  A school had been built in 1862, with a well-paid teacher, and 51 children attended in 1863. 

Aurora in 1863 had 25 saloons, almost as many gambling houses and – in the Chinese quarter – "numerous disgusting brothels".  The young geologist William Brewer, who visited the town that year, described the night-life:

Aurora of a Sunday night – how shall I describe it?  It is so unlike anything East that I can compare it with nothing you have ever seen.  One sees a hundred men to one woman and child.  Saloons – saloons – saloons – liquor – everywhere.  And here the men are – where else can they be?  At home in their cheerless, lonesome hovels or huts?  No, in the saloons, where lights are bright, amid the hum of many voices and the excitement of gambling….  Here – where men are congregated and living uncomfortably, where there are no home ties or social checks, no churches, no religions here one sees gambling and vice in all its horrible realities….  Here, too, are women – for nowhere else does one see prostitutes as he sees them in a new mining town.  All combine to excite and ruin.  No wonder that one sees sad faces and haggard countenances and wretched looks, that we are so often told that "many are dying off" surely, no wonder! 

Gambling and prostitutes!  Other recreational pursuits included hunting, fishing, skiing, and dog- or badger-fights. 

An Environment of Endemic Violence

Life in Aurora was incredibly hard.  The first winter was so harsh that supplies of food ran out, and cattle were driven in from the nearby ranches to feed the population. 

Meanwhile, tension between the miners & ranchers and the indigenous Paiutes broke out into open warfare in 1862 when local ranchers killed the Paiute Chief Shoandow.  One of those killed in the ensuing conflict was the town Sheriff NF Scott, who was shot carrying a warrant for the arrest of the Paiute war-leader. 

Given that it was established during the years of the Civil War, the town also suffered political violence.  Although Nevada was a Union state, Joseph Calder (who recruited a unit of Nevada Cavalry to fight for the Union) described Aurora as a haven for renegade Copperheads.  Fistfights and shootouts between members of the Republican and Democratic Clubs were common.  Edwin Sherman, Unionist editor of the Esmerelda Star newspaper, was shot once and beaten twice.  Robert Draper, the editor of the Aurora Times – a ‘Copperhead’ – was challenged to a dual by a local Unionist. 

Law and Order in Aurora also suffered at the hand of the Daly Gang.  John Daly, a hired gunman, and his shadowy partner Three-fingered Jack McDowell, opened a saloon in Aurora in 1861, and ran an outlaw gang.  The gang was hired by the Pond Mining Company in their feud with a rival mining company, with orders to stop witnesses testifying in court.  The situation worsened in 1863 when Daly and other members of the gang became City Marshals.  Commented the Esmerelda Star:

"No sooner had the Marshal been sworn in than the worst villains that ever infested a civilized community were appointed policemen",

However, it was overwhelmingly the Aurorans themselves who were primarily responsible for their own problems.  Family life was almost non-existent due to the low number of women and children in the town and, McGrath comments:

"Aurorans paid little attention to organised religion, drank heavily, gambled incessantly, and carried revolvers". 

It was a society without any of the normal restraints and the result was that violence was a major problem.  Most men carried guns and knives daily, and fatal armed conflict were common. 

In nearby Brodie there were fifty shootings during a six-year period.  Eight were suicides, another eight resulted from property disputes, one was caused by adultery, but most were family quarrels or arguments between neighbours.  Other crimes involved stagecoach robberies, petty theft, drunken brawls, fights between prostitutes, Tong wars among the Chinese, and attacks on the local Indians by white settlers. 

Law and Order in Aurora

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that there was ‘no law’ in Aurora. 

For more serious conflicts, the town had two militia companies (which defeated the Paiute), and sent a cavalry company for an (uneventful) tour of duty in the Civil War. 

Aurora had a County Sheriff and a Township Constable from the very start.  Although Sheriff Scott died fighting the Paiute, Sheriffs GW Bailey and DG Francis served four terms each and both survived their tenure unscathed. 

The town had a County Jail (though the walls were so badly cracked it was not considered secure) and a city jail.  It had a justice court and a district court, a county judge, Justices of the Peace, a coroner, state prosecutors … and defence lawyers, who would disqualify jurors, create reasonable doubt in juries, cite insufficient evidence, and delay trials in the hope that witnesses would move on. 

Crimes common today – robbery, burglary, racial violence and rape – were almost non-existent in 1860s Aurora.  There was little violence against women (except prostitutes) and at least token law enforcement by courts. 

Neither were the killings and shootings unbridled.  Most were provoked by challenges to honour and manhood, took place under the influence of alcohol, and the result was that the drunken combatants missed each other.  This was reflected in the light sentencing afterwards.  A ‘fair fight’ usually resulted in a verdict of justifiable homicide or self-defence by a jury – even if your opponent had just threatened you.  An exception to this leniency was where the victims were elderly, children, or women who were not prostitutes ...  but if a ‘rough’ died, no more was said.  As one exasperated observer commented:

"If three men shoot another to death, it is not murder but a pleasant pastime in the mountains — unless it can be proven that the three had conspired to kill their man.  Out of all the murders committed in this county in the past two years, not a murderer convicted!  What laws; what a country and what a peoples!"

Since the justice system was so lax, there was a temptation for citizens to resort to vigilante action, but this was very rare and neither were the vigilante committees unruly mobs.  Aurora had a Safety Committee of 600 people who in 1864 – after the Daly gang had murdered the local station-keeper – captured them, gave them a public ‘trial’, and hanged them.  Similarly, the vigilante hanging of Joseph DeRoche in Brodie in 1881, occurred because he had crept up on a brain-damaged miner and shot him in the back of the head. 

Conclusions

In 1864 the gold veins dried up, and Aurora disappeared almost as quickly as it had grown.  Much of the commercial district was destroyed by a fire in January 1866.  There were brief revivals in 1877 and 1905 as new seams were discovered, but Aurora today is a ghost town. 

McGrath points out that Aurora did not fit the Hollywood image of an indiscriminately anarchic Wild West.  There were no bank robberies, or gunfights at high noon.  Many culprits voluntarily surrendered when they had sobered up, and there was only one jailbreak, despite the ruinous condition of the jails.  The overall crime rate was much lower than in modern day urban areas.  And – although violence was endemic and homicide and female suicide more common than today – these events followed a pattern set by the values of the time. 

Meanwhile, the local community maintained sufficient order through formal legal mechanisms, creating a functioning blend of justice and violence that defined the frontier experience. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

 Photos of Aurora - then and now