Battle Mountain owes its very existence to the railroad.
Before the arrival of the Central Pacific Railroad in the fall of 1868, there was nothing here but open desert. What would become Battle Mountain began as a simple siding: extra tracks where trains could pass and where freight bound for Austin and Galena was unloaded. Railroad planners originally intended Argenta to be the sole major station between Winnemucca and Carlin. But railroads, like towns, follow opportunity, and Argenta proved poorly positioned for a booming mining district twenty miles to the southwest.
That district—the Battle Mountain Mining District—had been organized in 1866 and was rich in copper, a metal whose value depended heavily on affordable transportation. By contrast, the Reese River Mining District near Austin was already fading by 1869. Mine owner Robert McBeth of Galena and his associates convinced railroad executives that a station closer to Battle Mountain’s mines would be more profitable. The railroad agreed. Early in 1869, the Argenta depot was dismantled and rebuilt near a telegraph pole marked by McBeth’s sign, instantly shifting the region’s economic center. With that move, Battle Mountain became a rail town.
As a railroad station, Battle Mountain was perfectly positioned to serve a vast area. Supplies flowed in; ore, livestock, and wool flowed out. When mining slowed, agriculture sustained the town. Cattle were driven to corrals and shipped by rail, eventually by way of the Nevada Central Railroad, to markets as far away as Chicago and San Francisco. Sheep shearers arrived by train, and thousands of pounds of wool departed the same way. The railroad made it possible for even remote Nevada towns to stock quality goods, tying Battle Mountain to national markets. In 1885, the Central Pacific became the Southern Pacific, continuing that role for decades.
Rail expansion continued. In 1880, the long-anticipated narrow-gauge line between Battle Mountain and Austin was completed, though Austin’s boom was already waning. The Nevada Central Railway was foreclosed in 1887, reorganized, and operated until 1938. Its shops in Battle Mountain built a lavish passenger car known as the Silver State, intended for special occasions. Rarely used, it survives today at the California State Railroad Museum. Additional spurs served mining towns like Lewis, but declining production eventually led to their removal.
In the early 1900s, the Western Pacific Railroad (now part of Union Pacific) built a second line through North Battle Mountain, bypassing the town by two miles. While construction briefly revived hopes, changing transportation patterns soon caught up with railroads nationwide. Improved highways reduced passenger travel, and by 1968, passenger rail service in Battle Mountain had ended. Yet the rails had already done their work. They determined where the town would stand, who would settle here, and how Battle Mountain would connect to the wider world.
