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TOM STRAKA ON CHRIS KREIDER'S 'WARD CHARCOAL OVENS' AND NEVADA'S CARBONARI

CHRIS KREIDER'S "Ward Charcoal Ovens" depicts a little-known chapter of American forest history, one that brings together immigrant craftsmanship, class and ethnic warfare, and forest devastation, to illustrate the importance of timber in Nevada's early boom-and-bust economy and the fortunes it produced. The mural, painted on the wall of the First National Bank of Ely, Nevada, is one of a series commissioned to enhance the downtown business district with art and culture and to contribute to historical interpretation of the region's past.1 In the background of the mural, Kreider depicts the stands of piñon-juniper that fueled the Eureka County charcoal industry. Charcoal burns twice as hot as wood and, because it is lighter than wood, was much more economical to transport to the smelters. Nevada's mining economy succeeded in part due to this inexpensive source of fuel.2 At the painting's center, however, are the carbonari, the Italian and Swiss immigrants, experts in charcoal production, who cut the wood, built the kilns, carefully fired them to produce charcoal, and then shipped the finished product to the smelters. In 1880, carbonari accounted for nearly twelve percent of the population in Eureka County, the center of charcoal production.3	1
Photo by Robert H. Wynn.
The carbonari were not always depicted as heroic workers, however. In the 1860s, silver production expanded into central Nevada, first near Austin, then to Eureka—the "Pittsburgh of Nevada"—in the 1870s with the new Stetefeldt furnace.4 Rich Comstock ores required no smelting, but central Nevada ores needed processing, and smelters required fuel in the form of piñon pine and juniper cut from local hillsides.5 Even when Rocky Mountain coal became available at Virginia City, it cost as much as fuelwood.6 Thus, for over thirty years charcoal production had a severe impact on the region's scarce forest resources. The mills used several million bushels of charcoal annually. By 1871, the hills surrounding Eureka were totally denuded of trees for a radius of ten miles, by 1874, the radius was twenty miles, and by 1878, it was fifty miles.7 The same held for other mining centers around the state. Early observers blamed the carbonari for the resulting devastation. Dan De Quille reported in his 1889 history that, "In all directions its furnace chimneys vomit volumes of black sulphurous smoke—when Government officials do not 'pester' the people on account of their cutting timber."8	2
An early report on charcoal production on the Rocky Mountain federal lands condemned the carbonari directly: "The charcoal burner is the most conscienceless violator of law that we have, cutting everything down to poles 2 inches in diameter. He leaves behind him barrenness and desolation. The traffic in charcoal is so exhaustive upon the forests, and so injurious to the best interests of the State, that wherever permitted it should be done under a license only... There are no reasons why the charcoal burner should longer be allowed to prey upon the timber and young forest growth."9	. . .