Henry “Pancake” Comstock didn’t discover the Comstock lode, but he bullied the true discoverers into giving him a share

Despite his share in the silver discovery, Comstock didn’t become a millionaire.  He sold out early, squandered his wealth, and left the area to spend the rest of his life trying to find another Comstock lode.

The extensive and expensive surface and underground workings of the various Comstock silver mines required large outlays of investment capital.  Most of the investors were in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board, San Francisco’s first stock exchange was established to facilitate the frenzied trading in shares of Comstock silver-mining companies. Most Comstock mining fraud took place not in Nevada, but in the various San Francisco stock exchanges.

Samuel Clemens, writing under the name Mark Twain for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, took bribes from mining promoters in exchange for favorable newspaper writeups.

James G. “Slippery Jim” Fair was an able mining superintendent, but he also used insider deals to enrich himself at the expense of the shareholders of the companies he controlled.

James Flood was another member of the famous Bonanza firm.

Flood used his Comstock profits to build a mansion on Nob Hill in San Francisco.

A San Francisco Chronicle cartoon shows Comstock mining share speculators and their life savings being crushed under the wheels of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board.

As the Bank of California’s agent on the Comstock, William Sharon forced mining companies owing money to the bank to send their ore to mills owned by Sharon and other Bank of California insiders.

John P. Jones’ Comstock wealth paved his way into the U.S. Senate.  From Washington, he continued to profit from insider deals of the Comstock mill ring..

The famous silver mines are all shut down, but Virginia City is no ghost town. It thrives as a tourist attraction a short drive from Reno.