UNIONVILLE, ghost town in Pershing County, Nevada. Founded by miners in 1861, Unionville attracted prospectors on the hunt for the plentiful silver ore trapped in the surrounding hills. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, arrived in 1862 to try his luck but left disappointed after three weeks. He described Unionville in Roughing It as a town of “eleven cabins and a liberty-pole.”
Unionville enjoyed a brief boom between 1863 and 1870, during which time the population swelled to about fifteen hundred. Even at its height the town was rudimentary, consisting of nine saloons, six hotels, a brewery, ten stores, and a schoolhouse. Nevertheless, Unionville served as Humboldt County seat for half a dozen years after its founding.
Many of the prospectors in Unionville were Chinese, and anti-Chinese sentiment was rife among the White population. In 1869 a group organized themselves into the Anti-Chinese League of Unionville and forcibly evicted thirty-five of the town’s Chinese residents, forcing them onto wagons and dropping them at the nearest railroad depot. Eighteen of the perpetrators were indicted by the federal government for violating a treaty between the US and China.
Unionville’s boom times were brief. It was passed over in favor of nearby Winnemucca as a stop on the newly minted transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, and in 1873 the town was ravaged by fire. Though Chinese nationals trickled back into town, its overall population declined and by 1880 only about two hundred residents remained.
At present Unionville is home to twenty-seven people and one hotel, the Old Pioneer Garden B&B Guest Ranch. All basic services require a one-hour drive. Cemeteries, abandoned mills, and houses in various states of picturesque disrepair abound, however—including the cabin where Twain lodged—attract the odd tourist.