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NV - Bullfrog,Nye County - 1906 - Bullfrog Chief Mining Company Stock - Gil Schmidtmann Collection

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:38.00 USD Estimated At:75.00 - 100.00 USD
NV - Bullfrog,Nye County - 1906 - Bullfrog Chief Mining Company Stock - Gil Schmidtmann Collection
Session D is a Mail-Bid Only Auction. Absentee bids will be accepted only. No live bidding will be allowed. All winners will be contacted after the auction. BIDDING ENDS MONDAY JUNE 27 AT 5PM PACIFIC TIME!!!
Incorporated in the Territory of Arizona, 1905; Cert. #130 issued March 3, 1906 to Eugene Howell for 5000 shares. Signed by M.J. Cuddy as President and Eugene Howell, Secretary. U/C. Endorsed on reverse. The agent was T.L. Oddie of Tonopah [Biennial Report of the Secretary of State for Nevada, 1911-12, p. 12]; Eugene Howell was the Secretary of State from 1895-1903 [Ref: http://nsla.nevadaculture.org/dmdocuments/NVPoliticalHistory2006.pdf]. A humorist wrote “T.L. ODDIE Write the name of Jim Butler and you tell the beginning of the history of Tonopah; write the name of T. L. Oddie and give the work a mining camp, full grown and a winner." The story continued, In the sleepy little town of Belmont, which was at that time almost all of Southern Nevada, there was a young attorney endowed with plenty of brains but little coin of the realm. In this latter particular he resembled his fellow townsmen, for as some humorist writes, there was not more than $26 in all Nye County. Mr. Oddie was assistant district attorney, superintendent of schools, and various other things beneficial to the people of Belmont, but not particularly remunerative to T. L. Oddie [Ref: http://nsla.nevadaculture.org/dmdocuments/NVPoliticalHistory2006.pdf]. To quote the same humorist, his salary was $50 a month, payable in scrip in seven years. It was not then Oddie the miner, or Oddie the state senator that people heard of, but just Oddie the assistant district attorney, or Oddie, "the fellow that looked after the school kids." But young Oddie was not the sort of a man to be content long with a salary of $50 a month payable in seven years, and when Jim Butler returned from that now famous trip to Klondike with some rock that looked good, Mr. Oddie listened to his appeal and arranged to have the assay made. It was the beginning of a new life for Oddie. This was in the summer of 1900. By offering an assayer in Austin an interest in the property Jim Butler had discovered, and securing his report, Mr. Oddie made possible the Tonopah of today. With Jim Butler and W. Brougher, Mr. Oddie went to the Mizpah ground located by Butler, and there the three men, working by turns, sank a shaft fifteen feet. From there they hauled the ore, two wagon loads in all, to Belmont, and then a hundred miles farther to the nearest railroad at Austin. The $600, which was the net result of this shipment, was the first money to come from the now famous Mizpah Ledge. The story of Tonopah, with its leasers who gophered Oddie Mountain and made a fortune for its locators and for themselves, tells the rest. Mr. Oddie opened the Tonopah Mining Company's ground, as well as the Belmont and Jim Butler, and he made them all pay. He acquired heavy interests in the Midway Mining Company, the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad, and was the first president of the Nye & Ormsby County Bank. He was one of the first on the ground after the discovery of Goldfield, and put much money into that camp and Bullfrog, which has helped largely in the development of both. He has always been interested in securing public utilities and owns extensive water rights. One of his pet projects is a gigantic plan to bring an abundance of water into Goldfield and Tonopah, which should solve for all time the water problem in the two camps. Mr. Oddie was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., October 24, 1870. He was educated in Orange, N. J., and later graduated from the night school of New York University, New York City, where he was admitted to the bar. In 1898 the management of the Anson Phelps Stokes estate induced Mr. Oddie to come to Nevada, where the estate had large interests. Since that time he has never left the state except for brief visits. Few men have so many friends. He is a quiet, gentle-mannered man, handsome, trusts others implicitly, dislikes to say "no" to any proposition that has merit, and there are innumerable young men in Nevada today who owe their start in life to T. L. Oddie [Ref: Beatty, Who's Who In Nevada, Brief Sketches of Men Who are Making History in the Sagebrush State 1907;http://genealogytrails.com/nev/nye/bios/oddietl.html].