By Harold Fuller


The time is early 1905 and things are looking very grim for those who called Hawthorne their home.

The talk and gossip is flowing thick and heavy about just what the railroad officials were going to do.

Deep down they knew but didn’t want to face it. Railroad surveyors were steadily at work a few miles northeast of town and they knew it was a matter of time before things were going to change for everyone. As if that weren’t enough, Goldfield and its powerful lobbyists and big money men were busy pushing to move the county seat from Hawthorne. It was almost a foregone conclusion that they would succeed.

Moral among business and townspeople was at a very low point. So!! What to do? Have a party of course. The local Trainmen’s Ball was to be thrown at the Railroad Pavilion.

They refurbished the 30×60 bandstand and brought in a big name band and planned a heck of a party.

Upon finding out that Mr. J.M. Fulton, the big man with the Southern Pacific Railroad, had ordered that the train depot and everything in the park to be demolished, they really pitched a dozy.

This dance called the “Hard Times Dance” would be the last one held there. They had the whole area illuminated with the lights from the train engines and a multitude of Chinese lanterns hanging from the trees. Many of the railroad men left the next day, with sorrowful thoughts and throbbing heads, for the new town that would later be called Mina.