Brothers John A. and Edward Creighton came west scouting the first transcontinental telegraph lines from Omaha, Nebraska, to the coast. Temporarily settling in Virginia City, Edward hired Thompson and Griffith to construct this building, the first…

Prospectors discovered gold in Alder Gulch, Idaho Territory, on May 26, 1863. Within weeks, the countryside was teeming with thousands of prospectors, but the easily extracted placer gold soon played out. B. F. Christenot, acting independently or…