Henry Stimler
American (part Shoshone)
d. 1931
Henry 'Harry' Stimler was a half-Shoshone prospector from Belmont, Nevada, who, with Billy Marsh, staked the first claims of the Goldfield district in December 1902, naming the Sandstorm claim and the 'Grandpa' camp that became Goldfield.
Biography
Henry Stimler, known in the mining camps as Harry Stimler, was a native Nevadan from Belmont, of mixed white and Shoshone ancestry. He was a young roustabout in the new silver camp of Tonopah when samples of gold-bearing rock from the desert to the south, found by the Shoshone prospector Tom Fisherman around 1900 according to most accounts, prompted him and partner Billy Marsh to investigate.
On December 4, 1902, Stimler and Marsh located the Sandstorm, Kruger, and May Queen claims on the north ridge of Columbia Mountain and named the new district 'Grandpa,' predicting it would become the granddaddy of all gold camps. The prediction came true, though not for them: the district, renamed Goldfield, boomed after richer strikes in 1903-04 and became the greatest gold producer in Nevada history, its wealth flowing to later operators such as George Wingfield and George Nixon. Stimler realized comparatively little from the ground he had located.
Affable and well liked, Stimler stayed in mining and speculation, in later years selling mining stocks across central Nevada and the Death Valley country, where he prospered as a promoter. On August 22, 1931, at Tecopa, California, he was shot without explanation by a storekeeper who then turned the gun on himself; Stimler died in the ambulance. His birth date is not reliably documented, but he is remembered as the co-discoverer of Goldfield.