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Bodie & Benton Railway & Commercial Company Bond [199758]

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Stock & Bond - Transportation Start Price:100.00 USD Estimated At:200.00 - 400.00 USD
Bodie & Benton Railway & Commercial Company Bond [199758]
SOLD
150.00USDto G********s+ buyer's premium (37.50)
This item SOLD at 2025 Aug 09 @ 17:18UTC-07:00 : PDT/MST
FINAL AUCTION RECORD The Auctioneer’s podium notes serve as the final, legally binding record of the auction results, superseding any electronic bidding records. See Terms and Conditions
Bond no. 162, issued in 1886. Signed by Henry M. Yerington as president and the secretary (illegible). Punch cancelled signatures. Nice lumber camp vignette. 18 x 15" Yerington was superintendent of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad and president of the Carson & Colorado, among many other mining and land ventures. The Bodie and Benton Railway Company formed in 1882 out of the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, which had formed in 1881 to build a railroad for the purpose of getting wood to Bodie. The company principals were brothers Seth and Daniel Cook, R. N. Graves, and H. M. Yerington, who ran the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. This railroad is the only small gauge railroad in California that does not hook up to any other railway in the state. Its southern terminus was at Mono Mills and was never completed as envisioned to Benton. They hired Thomas Holt to supervise the construction. He hired many Chinese laborers, as they were familiar with building rail lines in the U. S., but Holt ended up having severe labor problems because of hiring the Chinese workers. People in the mid 1800s were very xenophobic about Chinese laborers. The U. S. government had just enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to stem the tide of immigration from China, but the hostility towards the group did not subside. When white residents of Bodie threatened violence, Yerington had his Chinese workers ferried out to the volcanic islands in Mono Lake on a steamer for protection! In 1893 the company reverted to its former name [Ref: Myrick, David F., The Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California, 1992].
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Date: 1886
Country (if not USA):
State: California
City: Bodie
Provenance: