Editing Beatty, Nevada (section)

==History==
Before the arrival of non-indigenous explorers, prospectors, and settlers, Western Shoshone in the Beatty area hunted game and gathered wild plants in the region. It is estimated that the 19th-century population density of the Indians near Beatty was one person per {{convert|44|sqmi|km2}}. By the middle of the century, European diseases had greatly reduced the  [[Native Americans in the United States|Indian]] population, and incursions by newcomers had disrupted the native traditions. In about 1875, the Shoshone had six camps, with a total population of 29, along the Amargosa River near Beatty. Some of the survivors and their descendants continued to live in or near Beatty, while others moved to [[Indian reservation|reservations]] at [[Walker Lake, Nevada|Walker Lake]], [[Reese River]], [[Duckwater, Nevada|Duckwater]], or elsewhere.<ref name = "McCracken 8-12">McCracken, ''History'',  pp. 8–12</ref>

Beatty is named after "Old Man" Montillus (Montillion) Murray Beatty, a Civil War veteran and miner who bought a ranch along the [[Amargosa River]] just north of the future community<ref name ="McCracken 21-22">McCracken, ''History'', pp. 21–22</ref> and became its first postmaster in 1905.<ref name = "McCracken 6">McCracken, ''History'', p. 6</ref>  The community was laid out in 1904 or 1905 after Ernest Alexander "Bob" Montgomery, owner of the Montgomery Shoshone Mine near Rhyolite, decided to build the Montgomery Hotel in Beatty.<ref name = "McCracken 48-49">McCracken, ''History'', pp. 48–49</ref> Montgomery was drawn to the area, known as the Bullfrog Mining District, because of a [[gold rush]] that began in 1904 in the [[Bullfrog Hills]] west of Beatty.<ref>Lingenfelter, p. 203</ref>

[[File:Montgomery Hotel 1905.jpg|thumb|left|The Montgomery Hotel in 1905. It was owned by Bob Montgomery, namesake of the Montgomery-Shoshone Mine in nearby [[Rhyolite, Nevada|Rhyolite]].]] 
[[File:Beatty 1906 Ad.jpg|thumb|Advertisement in 1906 Sunset magazine]]
During Beatty's first year, wagons pulled by teams of horses or mules hauled freight between the Bullfrog district (that included the towns of Rhyolite, [[Bullfrog, Nevada|Bullfrog]], [[Gold Center, Nevada|Gold Center]], Transvaal, and Springdale) and the nearest railroad, in Las Vegas, and by the middle of 1905, about 1,500 horses were engaged in this business.<ref>McCracken, ''History'', p. 52</ref> In October 1906, the [[Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad]] (LV&T) began regular service to Beatty; in April 1907, the Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad (BG) reached the community, and the [[Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad|Tonopah and Tidewater]] (T&T) line added a third railroad in October 1907.<ref name="McCracken History 56-59"/> The LV&T ceased operations in 1918, the BG in 1928, and the T&T in 1940.<ref name="McCracken History 56-59"/> Until the railroads abandoned their lines, Beatty served as the railhead for many mines in the area, including a [[Fluorite|fluorspar]] mine on [[Bare Mountain Range (Nevada)|Bare Mountain]], to the east.<ref>McCracken, ''History'', pp. 62–70</ref>

Beatty's first newspaper was the ''Beatty Bullfrog Miner'', which began publishing in 1905 and went out of business in 1909. The ''Rhyolite Herald'' was the region's most important paper, starting in 1905 and reaching a circulation of 10,000 by 1909. It ceased publication in 1912, and the Beatty area had no newspaper from then until 1947. The ''Beatty Bulletin'', a supplement to the ''Goldfield News'', was published from then through 1956.<ref>McCracken, ''History'', pp. 49–51</ref>

Beatty's population grew slowly in the first half of the 20th&nbsp;century, rising from 169 in 1929 to 485 in 1950.<ref>McCracken, ''History'', pp. 102–03</ref> The first reliable electric company in the community, Amargosa Power Company, began supplying electricity in about 1940. Phone service arrived during [[World War II]], and the town installed a community-wide sewer system in the 1970s.<ref name = "McCracken 92-93">McCracken, ''History'', pp. 92–93</ref> When a new mine opened west of Beatty in 1988, the population briefly surged from about 1,000 to between 1,500 and 2,000 by the end of 1990.<ref name ="McCracken 155-57"/> Since the mine's closing in 1998, the population has fallen again to near its former level.