MINERAL COUNTY

Mineral County was originally part of Esmeralda County for approximately its first 50 years. By an act of the legislature, Mineral County was established in 1911. Hawthorne was made the county seat in 1911 and remains the county seat today. Hawthorne was also the Esmeralda County Seat from 1883 to 1907. Mineral County is much like the rest of Nevada. Cattle ranching and mining operations have dominated the history of the Mineral County economy. The area around Hawthorne also includes the Army Depot. If you're driving along Highway 95 and see a bunch of little buildings in the desert off in the distance, they are military storage bunkers. Aurora was one of the earliest mining boom towns in Nevada. It was considered a sister camp to Bodie, California. In the early days of aurora (very early 1860's), they were unsure if it sat in Nevada or California. Two separate town governments were actually set up. One for each state. Samuel Clemens AKA: "Mark Twain" got his Nevada start in Aurora before moving on to Virginia City. There, Mark Twain began writing for the Territorial Enterprise by accident. This started Twain's writing career. The rest of Twain's writing career speaks for itself. So yes, Nevada! You can take credit for creating Mark Twain, the writer and author. Aurora was originally the county seat of Esmeralda County. Today, it sits inside of Mineral County. The population of Mineral County was 1,848 residents in 1920. The Mineral County population in 2020 was approximately 4,500 residents.