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TOM STRAKA ON CHRIS KREIDER’S
‘WARD CHARCOAL OVENS’ AND NEVADA’S CARBONARI
CHRIS KREIDER’S “Ward Charcoal Ovens” depicts a little-known chapter of
American forest history, one that brings together immigrant craftsmanship, class
and ethnic warfare, and forest devastation, to illustrate the importance of timber
Photo by Robert H. Wynn.
Tom Straka, “On Chris Kreider’s ‘Ward Charcoal Ovens’ and Nevada’s Carbonari,” Environmental History
11 (April 2006): 344-349.
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in Nevada’s early boom-and-bust economy and the fortunes it produced. The mural,
painted on the wall of the First National Bank of Ely, Nevada, is one of a series
commissioned to enhance the downtown business district with art and culture
and to contribute to historical interpretation of the region’s past. 1 In the
background of the mural, Kreider depicts the stands of piñon-juniper that fueled
the Eureka County charcoal industry. Charcoal burns twice as hot as wood and,
because it is lighter than wood, was much more economical to transport to the
smelters. Nevada’s mining economy succeeded in part due to this inexpensive
source of fuel.2 At the painting’s center, however, are the carbonari, the Italian
and Swiss immigrants, experts in charcoal production, who cut the wood, built
the kilns, carefully fired them to produce charcoal, and then shipped the finished
product to the smelters. In 1880, carbonari accounted for nearly twelve percent
of the population in Eureka County, the center of charcoal production.3
The carbonari were not always depicted as heroic workers, however. In the
1860s, silver production expanded into central Nevada, first near Austin, then to
Eureka—the “Pittsburgh of Nevada”—in the 1870s with the new Stetefeldt furnace.4
Rich Comstock ores required no smelting, but central Nevada ores needed
processing, and smelters required fuel in the form of piñon pine and juniper cut
from local hillsides.5 Even when Rocky Mountain coal became available at Virginia
City, it cost as much as fuelwood.6 Thus, for over thirty years charcoal production
had a severe impact on the region’s scarce forest resources. The mills used several
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million bushels of charcoal annually. By 1871, the hills surrounding Eureka were
totally denuded of trees for a radius of ten miles, by 1874, the radius was twenty
miles, and by 1878, it was fifty miles.7 The same held for other mining centers
around the state. Early observers blamed the carbonari for the resulting
devastation. Dan De Quille reported in his 1889 history that, “In all directions its
furnace chimneys vomit volumes of black sulphurous smoke—when Government
officials do not ‘pester’ the people on account of their cutting timber.”8
An early report on charcoal production on the Rocky Mountain federal lands
condemned the carbonari directly: “The charcoal burner is the most
conscienceless violator of law that we have, cutting everything down to poles 2
inches in diameter. He leaves behind him barrenness and desolation. The traffic
in charcoal is so exhaustive upon the forests, and so injurious to the best interests
of the State, that wherever permitted it should be done under a license only...
There are no reasons why the charcoal burner should longer be allowed to prey
upon the timber and young forest growth.”9
Such critiques failed to recognize the labor and skill the carbonari brought to
the difficult practice of producing charcoal in an arid land. Single-leaf piñon and
Utah juniper were difficult to cut—short, small, and very brushy. Most of the dried
logs ended up in earth-covered pits, rather than charcoal kilns. Workers stacked
wood at ground level, covered them with dirt, and built a chimney in the center to
serve as a flue. It took tremendous skill to control the burn; a one hundred cord
earthen kiln might take a month to burn and could produce about three thousand
bushels of charcoal.10
Piñon and juniper burned nicely in the earth-covered pits, but Utah juniper
and mountain mahogany are commonly believed to have required higher
temperatures than the pits could produce.11 Italian immigrants brought the skills
to build kilns of stone, adobe, fire brick, or a combination of the three; they usually
had a beehive-shape and a height equal to the diameter. The diameter ranged
from sixteen to twenty-six feet; wall thickness ranged from thirty inches at the
base to twelve to eighteen inches at the top. Each kiln had two large openings, an
entrance at ground level at the front and another higher up at the rear. There
were also two to four rows of vent holes at the base, and a vent at the top, which
allowed carbonari to regulate the flow of air, and thus the rate of the burn.12 It
took great skill, and accomplished oversight, to manage the burn. The charcoal
cooled for up to a week before the workers opened the kiln; mistakes could cause
spontaneous fires which could destroy the results of weeks of labor.
Mining corporations, oblivious to the skills involved, paid the carbonari poorly.
As many workers could not speak English, they were cheated in transactions,
with greater profit going to the teamsters and middlemen who transported the
finished charcoal to the smelting mills. In 1889, with the price of charcoal at
twenty-eight cents per bushel, a group of carbonari and their supporters met at
Tatti’s saloon in Eureka, and called a strike to raise the price to thirty cents.13 In
response, mining companies formed the Eureka Coalburners Protective
Association and threatened strike-breakers and teamsters. Violence broke out
along transport routes, cutting off the coal supply. Governor John Henry Kinkead
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activated the Nevada Militia to restore order. The local jail was soon filled with
Italian workers, and overflow prisoners ended up at the local armory. A group of
deputies confronted over one hundred Italians at Fish Creek, south of Eureka,
and violence erupted, leaving five Italians dead and many wounded. One deputy
had slight wounds. The riot and killings ended the “Charcoal Burners’ War” or
“Nevada’s Italian War.” The price of charcoal dropped to twenty-six cents a
bushel.14
The “Italian” War was not an anomaly; economic conflict took on an ethnic
and racial element throughout the Great Basin whenever European Americans
felt threatened by “foreign” workers. A mining boom at Tybo in 1876 created a
labor shortage; the charcoal contractor brought Chinese workers to cut wood and
fire the kilns, at wages equal to those paid to white workers. The Workingmen’s
Protective Union took exception, and union members escorted the Chinese out
of town. When the labor contractor sent armed men to bring the Chinese workers
back, the union threatened further action. The Chinese laborers left in disgust;
the union helped to pay their way.15
Kreider’s mural shows little of this history of forest devastation and ethnic
and racial conflict. It omits some of the common issues in American tradition
related to the charcoal making industry.16 Nearby Eureka’s history includes events
that characterize minority dissent (Italian carbonari), organized labor, and civil
disobedience (disruption of trade in charcoal). The mural, like the grave marker
that mentions a massacre in Eureka, was produced over one hundred years after
the charcoal ranches of Nevada. Today most people understand the frustration of
the carbonari and would likely sympathize with them. At the time of the strike,
most opinions sent to the local newspaper in Eureka supported the use of force
to quell worker dissent. A typical letter stated, “The blood letting at Eureka
yesterday will doubtless have a wholesome effect, and has probably convinced
the Italian coal burners that there is a law of the land that is superior to the rule
of a mob... and as they gaze on the corpses they will feel a respect for American
laws and American equal rights which before they were incapable of.”17 The mural
refrains from noticing these social issues.
Instead, it celebrates the workers whose skills laid the foundation for Nevada’s
economic growth. Evidence persists to support the story of these forest workers.
Charcoal kilns are scattered all over central Nevada, at least the remains of them
are. Several good examples exist in parks or in protected areas.18 Charcoal
production pits still can be found, along with the site of the Charcoal Burners
War.19 The building that housed Tatti’s saloon is still in Eureka.20 These remind
us of the importance of timber to Western mining: timber to shore up the mines,
to build the surrounding towns, to fuel the smelters, and to fuel a diverse
community of skilled workers striving for a better life.21
Thom
as JJ.. S
tr
ak
a is professor of forestry and natural resources at Clemson
homas
Str
trak
aka
University, Clemson, S.C. He has a keen interest in western and Nevada natural
resource history and issues.
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17.
18.
For information on the Ely Renaissance Society and a listing the Ely Murals with
photographs and descriptions, go to the society’s website at www.whitepinechamber.
com/ers or a related site at www.greatbasinheritage.org/elymurals.htm.
Russell R. Elliott, Nevada’s Twentieth-Century Mining Boom: Tonopah, Goldfield, Ely
(Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1966).
Martha H. Bowers and Hans Muessig, History of Central Nevada: An Overview of the
Battle Mountain District (Reno, Nevada: Bureau of Land Management, 1982), 60-61.
James A. Young and Jerry D. Budy, “Historical Use of Nevada’s Pinyon-Juniper
Woodlands,” Journal of Forest History 23 (July 1979): 116-17.
Young and Budy, “Historical Use of Nevada’s Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands,” 112-21.
Comstock ores were “free-milling,” while central Nevada ores were termed “refractory
or rebellious.” This meant central Nevada ores had to be dry crushed and roasted in
reverberatory furnaces. These furnaces used a cord of wood per ton of capacity and
fuelwood accounted for about 60 percent of milling cost. Development of the Stetefeldt
furnace in 1869 greatly increased fuel efficiency and only required one-third the wood
of the earlier process.
Dan De Quille [William Wright], The Big Bonanza (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Company, 1876), 174.
Ronald M. Lanner, The Pinon Pine: A Natural and Cultural History (Reno: The
University of Nevada Press, 1981), 122-24.
Dan De Quille [William Wright], A History of the Comstock Silver Lode and Mines
(Virginia City, Nevada: F. Boegle Bookseller & Stationer, 1889), 152.
Edgar T. Ensign, Report on the Forest Conditions of the Rocky Mountains (Washington,
D.C.: USDA Forestry Division Bulletin No. 2, 1888), 77. As cited in Lanner, The Pinon
Pine, 182.
Young and Budy, “Historical Use of Nevada’s Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands,” 116-19.
Ronald L. Reno, “Fuel for the Frontier: Industrial Archaeology of Charcoal Production
in the Eureka Nevada Mining District, 1869-1891” (PhD diss., University of NevadaReno, 1996), 114-15. Reno disputes that the need for higher temperatures was the reason
kilns were used. Kilns enhanced productivity and the greater control of burning allowed
for charcoal with special characteristics.
James A. O’Neill, Charcoal Industry of the West (typescript), 2. Cited in Bowers and
Muessig, History of Central Nevada, 60.
Franklin Grazeola, “The Charcoal Burners War of 1879: A Study of the Italian
Immigrant in Nevada” (MA thesis, University of Nevada-Reno, 1969). Grazeola notes
that the real basis of the charcoal burners discontent was the debtor relationship with
some of the town merchants. This erupted in two key issues: the price of charcoal and
the right to inspect shipping receipts. There was also an issue of overcharge by town
merchants on carbonari accounts. One carbonari stated that they could live on a price
of even twenty-six cents a bushel if not subject to an overcharge for supplies and food.
Young and Budy, “Historical Use of Nevada’s Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands,” 118-19.
Lanner, The Pinon Pine, 128-130.
Grazeola, “The Charcoal Burners War,” ix.
Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 24, 1879, as cited by Reno, “Fuel for the Frontier,” 68.
Curiously, not many kilns still exist near Eureka. The best example near Eureka is the
Phillipsburg Charcoal Kiln located on the Diamond Range north of Eureka. One of the
largest concentrations of charcoal kilns is south of Eureka on the Hot Creek Range.
The Tybo kilns are the best known of these, but over a dozen kilns also exist in Kiln
Canyon, Fourmile Canyon, and South Sixmile Canyon. Near Pioche are the Bristol Wells