Editing Esmeralda County, Nevada (section)

==History==
Esmeralda County is one of the original counties in Nevada, established on November 25, 1861.<ref>{{cite book |title=History of Nevada |date=1881 |publisher=Thompson and West |pages=401–425 |url=http://www.us-data.org/nv/tw/esmeralda/ |chapter=History of Esmeralda County}}</ref> When it was organized, it comprised the part of the [[Nevada Territory]] south of the [[39th parallel north|39th parallel]] and east of [[Mason Valley (Nevada)|Mason Valley]].<ref name="History">{{Cite book |url =https://archive.org/details/historyofnevada00ange |pages =[https://archive.org/details/historyofnevada00ange/page/512 512] and 513 |title =History of Nevada |year =1881 |last1 =Thompson |last2 =West |location =Oakland, California |publisher=Thompson and West |access-date =February 7, 2016 }}</ref> ''Esmeralda'' is the Spanish and Portuguese word for "[[emerald]]". An early California miner from San Jose, James Manning Cory, named the Esmeralda Mining District after [[Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)|Esmeralda]] the [[Romani people|Romani]] dancer from ''[[The Hunchback of Notre-Dame]]''.<ref>Paul F. Starrs, "Esmeralda County, Nevada: Empty Land? Poor Land? Fair Land? Masters thesis, Geography, University of California, Berkeley, 1984</ref>

Just after the organization of Esmeralda County, the vast majority of the land area had yet to be explored. [[John C. Frémont]] was one of the few people who had explored parts of the county. He had crossed [[Big Smoky Valley]] in 1845. Also, [[Aurora, Nevada|Aurora]] and its northern corridor had been encountered. In 1862 and 1863, the area along the [[Reese River]] was explored during the [[Reese River excitement]]. The event resulted in the establishment of three mining districts in the [[Toiyabe Range]], namely Marysville, Twin River, and Washington, and the establishment of a number of settlements and ranches in Esmeralda County. Explorers pursued south and explored the [[Shoshone Mountains]]. The mining district [[Union District, Nevada|Union]] was organized after silver was found in 1863 and the settlement of [[Ione, Nevada|Ione]] was founded there.<ref name="History"/>

The total area of Esmeralda County more than halved as [[Nye County, Nevada|Nye County]] was organized on February 16, 1864, entirely  out of land that used to be part of Esmeralda County.<ref name="History"/> Esmeralda has had three county seats: [[Aurora, Nevada|Aurora]] until 1883, [[Hawthorne, Nevada|Hawthorne]] from 1883 to 1907 and finally Goldfield. At one point, due to the disputed border with California, Aurora was simultaneously the [[county seat]] of both [[Mono County]], California and Esmeralda County.  [[Samuel Clemens]] ([[Mark Twain]]) wrote about his time as a miner in the Esmeralda District in his book ''[[Roughing It]]''.

Esmeralda grew from a [[gold]] mining boom in the first years of the 20th century. [[Goldfield, Nevada|Goldfield]], a town founded in 1902, increased rapidly, and it soon became the largest town in Nevada, with about 20,000 people in 1906,<ref>Plaque on the Southern Nevada Consolidated Telephone-Telegraph Company Building, used from 1906 to 1963</ref> but its population rapidly decreased after the [[Goldfield, Nevada, labor troubles of 1906–1907]]. The mines were largely tapped out by the end of the 1910s and the economy and population declined afterwards.