About Letters from Cornucopia

"The Blonger boys at The Palace say they never saw such times."

That brief quotation from the Daily Silver State, found on a genealogy website in the early days of the internet, was one of the first clues we had of Lou and Sam Blonger's whereabouts between 1869, when they headed west together from Mt. Carroll, Illinois, and 1882, when they set up shop in New Albuquerque. The words left us wanting more. What times? And where?

Eventually we located the brothers in the Cornucopia mining district of northern Nevada during the winter of 1875-76. A couple of years before, Cornucopia had been the latest and greatest western boomtown. SENTENCE. But Sam and Lou, who were getting started in the mines and saloons of Dry Canyon, Utah.... When things slowed down there, they spent some time in Salt Lake City before returning to another barren, godforsaken outpost on the edge of nowhere, this time in the brushlands of northern Nevada.

The Blonger Brothers' experience in the small mining camps of the West was not easy to research, and back then we had bigger fish to fry—the summer of '82, when they tag-teamed as sheriff of New Albuquerque, and of course, Lou's ignominious downfall after a 30-year career as the crime boss of Denver. But during the days of COVID, I took a closer look at newspaper coverage of Cornucopia's brief existence. I came up with something I wanted to share.

There is little written about Cornucopia, outside of newspaper accounts. (There is literally one small book, "archeological and historical" about Cornucopia in WorldCat.) ... forgottenevada.org=262 names but does not mention Cornucopia. Ghosttowns.com=563. Silverstateghosttowns=129 ...