Women of Schwab

Quick Facts

Significance:

Mining townsite in DEVA run entirely by 3 women

Gertrude Fesler, Mrs. F.W. Dunn, Helen H. Black

The townsite of Schwab sits on the eastern side of Death Valley, seemingly wiped from the earth. Upon closer inspection today, the site shows signs of various tents, businesses, and structures meant to service local mines.

Around Christmas of 1905, the townsite of Schwab was founded in Death Valley, after the Lost Horse Mine was established. Following on the tails of gold and silver discoveries in the Lee and Echo districts and within reasonable distance from the well populated Rhyolite site, Schwab was founded on gold prospecting. The townsite itself did not begin expanding until 1907 when others flocked to the region.

Miss Gertrude Fesler was the first woman to take interest in Schwab. A young stockbroker from Chicago, she moved to Rhyolite to broker deals and ended up purchasing one third of the interests in Schwab from a man in Rhyolite. The other two interests were held by a Col. Dunn and Mr. Black. As she got to know her business partners, she became close with their wives, and soon the women naturally ended up running the town. Col. Dunn “decided that his wife could as ably care for his interest in Schwab as he,” and Helen Black bought out her husband’s share. Thus the truly unique town of Schwab was born.

The town was still setting up in January 1907, but it exploded rather quickly. It became a bit of a marvel of the West, called “one of the most unique wonders of the new West is the town of Schwab, Cal., owned and promoted by women.” The town grew to have a saloon tent and while the saloon site today is surrounded by beer bottles, it seems there was an affinity for champagne in the town itself with a shocking amount of champagne caps in front of the town’s main tent where the Fesler, Dunn, and Black often drank midday tea.

The decline of Schwab is most often blamed on the women asserting their beliefs against drinking, gambling, and prostitution, however there just is no evidence for that. While it is a common idea that women “civilized” the western mining camps, the decline of Schwab aligned with the general decline of mining in this region. Even before the Financial Panic of 1907, many of the mines in the region were going under and Schwab’s location was simply not advantageous. With the California Lee camp operating in tandem with Rhyolite and within a day’s trip between the two sites, Lee already held an advantage. Add on the fact that all shipments had to go through Lee before reaching Schwab and that there was no way to assay minerals without traveling to Lee, many miners saw it to be more convenient. The reliance on Lee in a time when mines were declining in led townsite to shut down because it simply could not sustain itself with a dwindling population. By August 1907, the Schwab post office shut down permanently, and the town slowly faded from there.

Schwab was defined by the women who ran it, so it is convenient to blame its decline on the idea that city women would not stand for the rampant gambling, prostitution and drinking that characterized mining camps. However, the only evidence for the women chasing business out of town is that men in other mining camps wanted alcohol and prostitution; their denial of that is currently just not founded in any evidence.