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Tonopah is a census-designated place (CDP) in and the county seat of Nye County, Nevada, United States.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 It is located at the junction of U.S. Routes 6 and 95 approximately mid-way between Las Vegas and Reno. In the 2010 census the population was 2,478 and the CDP has a total area of , all land. ==History== The community began circa 1900 with the discovery of gold and silver-rich ore by prospector Jim Butler when he went looking for a lost burro he owned. The burro had wandered off during the night and sought shelter near a rock outcropping. When Butler discovered the animal the next morning, he picked up a rock to throw at the beast, but instead noticed the rock was unusually heavy. He had stumbled upon the second-richest silver strike in Nevada history. While Butler may have been responsible for the first ore strike, it took men of wealth and power to consolidate the mines and reinvest their profits into the infrastructure of the town of Tonopah. George Wingfield, a 24-year-old poker player when he arrived in Tonopah, played poker and dealt faro in the town saloons. Once he had a small bankroll he talked Jack Carey, owner of the Tonopah Club, into taking him in as a partner and to file for a gaming license. In 1903, miners rioted against Chinese workers in Tonopah, which spurred a boycott in China of U.S. goods. By 1904, after investing his winnings in the Boston-Tonopah Mining Company, Wingfield was worth $2 million. When old friend George S. Nixon, a banker, arrived in town, Wingfield invested in his Nye County Bank. They grub staked miners with friend Nick Abelman, bought existing mines, and by the time the partners moved to Goldfield, Nevada and made their Goldfield Consolidated Mining Company a public corporation in 1906, Nixon and Wingfield were worth over $30 million〔Moe, Al W. ''The Roots of Reno'', (), 2008, p.20〕 Real estate and gaming became big business throughout Central Nevada, but Wingfield saw the end of the gold and silver mining riches coming and took his bankroll to Reno where he invested heavily in real estate and casinos. By 1910, gold production was falling and by 1920 the town of Tonopah had less than half the population it had fifteen years earlier. Small mining ventures continued to provide income for local miners and the small town struggled on, taking advantage of its location about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas as a stopover and rest spot on a lonely highway. Today the Tonopah Station has slots and the Banc Club also offers some gaming. Recently, Tonopah has relied on the nearby Tonopah Test Range as its main source of employment. The military has used the range and surrounding areas as a nuclear test site, a bombing range, and as a base of operations for the development of the F-117 Nighthawk. In the fall of 2011, a California-based solar energy company, SolarReserve, started construction on $980 million advanced solar energy project just outside of town called the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. The project incorporates SolarReserve's advanced solar energy storage technology and will put Tonopah at the worldwide center of technology for this class of solar energy storage. The project construction activities, which peaks at 800 workers on site, was scheduled to be completed in 2014. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tonopah, Nevada」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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