A Treasure at Death Valley
In Death Valley, wrapped in perpetual silence, are some of the men who discovered Greenwater, the land of copper. Theirs is a part of the story that should be told here—the story of the finding of this land, where mountains are made of copper—but Death Valley is a mysterious, silent place, that guards its secrets and its riches well. And there, if one could seek, might be found the men who first trod the Funeral mountains in quest of hidden lodes, and who in time were lured by the very mystery of the place to their graves on the western slope of these hills. Now even the names of these pioneer prospectors have slipped into oblivion, while the wealth which they sought and probably found, was left for those who followed.
Death by starvation, by thirst or from the desert heat have no fear for the man who seeks the wealth which nature' has stored in her mountain and desert fastnesses. Where prospectors have gone and perished others follow. For thirty years men of this metal have walked over the Amargosa desert, followed the river to its sink in Death Valley, and from time to time located the copper deposit in the Funeral mountains. Those who returned from these ventures brought with them the story of their find and sometimes samples of the red oxide ore with the green copper glace. Thus years slipped by and still the great copper lodes in the Funeral range were left undisturbed by the miner's pick. The stories of these riches took on the shimmering hue of a myth, and in time people believed only a very little about this wealth of copper. Thus this deposit mignt have lain for years to come, had not one prospector, with an imagination and with superb confidence heard the story of Funeral range copper. With this man properly begins the history of Greenwater, and to him almost entirely the world owes the discovery of this mass of copper wealth.