Golconda, Nevada: Named for Diamonds, Built on Hot Springs

Before the railroad arrived, westbound emigrants in the eighteen forties and fifty knew Golconda for one thing: hot springs. The springs were a watering hole in the middle of a brutal desert crossing, and travelers said the waters had healing properties. When the Central Pacific Railroad built through here in eighteen sixty-eight, it established an ore-shipping station at the springs and word spread further.

The following year, a post office was established and the place was named Golconda, after Golkonda, the ancient diamond-mining fortress city of India, a name that had come to mean fabulous wealth. A copper strike in eighteen sixty-nine raised hopes, but the real boom waited until eighteen ninety-nine, when a narrow-gauge railroad linked the town to mining camps twelve miles south. For a few years Golconda had six hotels, five hundred residents, and a newspaper.

By about nineteen ten the mines had closed. The famous hot-springs hotel burned in nineteen sixty-one. What remains is a quiet roadside stop in Humboldt County.