Glitter of gold can’t tarnish silver in Nevada’s nickname

Nevada is the nation’s biggest gold producer, the bullion behemoth behind 75 percent of all U.S. gold output.

In fact, if the state were its own country, Nevada would rank in the world’s top five for gold production, along with Australia, South Africa, China and Russia.

So why, you might wonder, is Nevada called the Silver State?

Simple: The precious metal was the big thing here in the 1860s, when Nevada first became a territory, and then a state, said Tim Crowley, president of the Nevada Mining Association. The 1859 discovery of the Comstock Lode — the nation’s first big silver find — drew prospectors from across the country. They tapped the vein to the tune of more than eight million ounces over two decades, in the process forging some of the nation’s best-known boom towns. Virginia City, for example, was the biggest city between Chicago and San Francisco in the 1860s and ’70s.

Silver’s image has tarnished a bit since. Thanks to an eye-opening price of roughly $1,300 an ounce, glittering gold is grabbing everyone’s attention these days, Crowley said. So it might surprise you to know that we actually continue to produce more silver than gold.

Nevada typically mines around 7.5 million ounces of silver a year, compared with 5.5 million ounces of gold. In 2012, the latest year with available numbers, companies in Nevada mined 241.7 metric tons of silver, and 159.2 metric tons of gold, according to the Nevada Mining Association.

Despite those production stats, silver can’t get much respect. That’s because silver, unlike gold, corrodes when exposed to air and water, so its applications in industry and medicine are more limited. One of its biggest industrial users — film photography — is dying, and taking a big nugget of demand with it. Those issues have helped strand silver at a decidedly unsexy price of roughly $20 an ounce. That’s about 1.5 percent of gold’s market value.

None of that makes silver irrelevant, though. It’s popular in jewelry, and used in batteries, mirrors, solar panels, water distillation, silver plating, dentistry and cutlery. Nevada, the nation’s largest silver producer, yields a third of U.S. supply. That gives the state strategic importance as a national and global silver supplier.

Silver even played a starring role in one of Nevada’s most infamous criminal cases. After the 1998 death of casino owner Ted Binion, his former girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her lover, Rick Tabish, were acquitted of his murder but convicted on burglary and larceny charges for their theft of $7 million of Binion’s silver. The bars were stashed in an underground vault on a dirt lot along the main drag in Pahrump, where making off with them discreetly proved impossible, thanks in no small part to their weight: about 36 tons, or roughly the same as two school buses.

As much as any economic boost it’s given the state, silver also lines some of Nevada’s most enduring myths.

That legend that has the state capitol’s dome covered in silver in the 19th century? Not possible, because of silver’s corrosive tendencies, according to former state archivist Guy Rocha. (The dome was actually tin, painted to look like silver.)

Nor is it true that the feds brought Nevada into the union so that its silver riches could finance the Civil War, Rocha said.

The Comstock Lode encouraged the government to make Nevada a territory in 1861, and Washington, D.C., snapped up much of the region’s early gold and silver stores to support U.S. currency. But by the time Nevada gained statehood in 1864, the war was nearly over. The bigger driver to entry was Nevada’s potential political support of President Abraham Lincoln and his causes, including ratifying the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery.

Still, we doubt anyone will let a few tall tales or legends mar the reputation of a fitting state symbol.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @J_Robison1 on Twitter.