Major funding for this program was provided by the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs State Historic Preservation Office.

Additional funding was provided by Nevada Humanities and the Nevada Arts Council.

MUSIC >>Marla Carr: Hi I'm Marla Carr.

Welcome to House with a History.

Alison Oram.

Eilley Bowers.

One in the same.

Scottish born, she was married at age 15.

Six years later she traveled with her first husband to New Orleans and on to Salt Lake City as the Gentile wife of a newly converted Mormon.

Thus she began a journey which would take her from Scotland, to Utah, to the Comstock Lode.

The Bowers mansion stands as a testament to her grit, and her resourcefulness.

Eilley's story is one of extremes - a parable of rags to riches that travels far enough to come full circle, leaving her destitute in death.

Whether its telling will leave you in awe of this self-reliant woman, or feeling an undeniable pity-- depends on how you respond to the tale of the Queen of the Comstock.

MUSIC >>Carr: The Bowers mansion - out of place, out of time, -- the stone structure rises from the base of the Sierra Nevada.

Though many newly minted Comstock millionaires chose to build their houses in Virginia City or San Francisco, the Bowers constructed their 16-room home in the solitude of Washoe Valley.

MUSIC >>Carr: The view across the valley is beautiful in the way that only Nevada defines beauty.

Throughout the day the sun brushes across the barren hills, stroking them with light.

MUSIC >>Carr: Hot springs flow through the property.

In the 1900s, two ponds were available for the daring to take a dip.

A few trees clung to the hillside in lonely isolation.

The appetite of the mines and railroads had already decimated the natural forest.

The Bowers Mansion was constructed in 1863 using native materials - local granite, Jeffery Pine and Douglas Fir.

It was a combination of the popular Italianate style incorporated into Eilley's memories of the grand Georgian mansions found in her native Scotland.

>>Bert Bedeau: Uh, it's a, a form that is carried over on the exterior of the building, by a symmetrical facade, balanced on, on either side of the central axis.

As you can see, on this building we have five bays, which is the center entry bay or door, flanked by two, two windows on either side.

Uh, a symmetrical porch, uh, and, and, and a sort of a balanced look to the building which is not typical of a high Victorian.

The Victorians were all about, uh, asymmetry and, uh, and eccentricity.

>>Carr: The fountain in front of the house has been there from the beginning, when horse and carriage would deliver Eilley Oram Bowers, her husband, Sandy, and their daughter, Persia to the steps of this elegant house.

The entry is broad and it runs the length of the house, from front to back, with doors that open at each end.

There is a fine staircase with a turned mahogany handrail that leads to the second floor.

MUSIC >>Bedeau: What we call a 'center-hall double parlor' house identified by a large, wide center corridor in the middle of the house, um, with a stair running up, uh, flanked by double parlors.

This was an important element in keeping the house cool in the summertime.

Uh, it was a, a circulation area.

You could open up the house, the, the doors at either end and, uh, be able to catch the breezes.

This is a form that is associated with Georgian architecture in the eastern part of the United States.

>>Carr: The room to the right is the reception room.

Here Eilley Bowers would receive her guests in opulence.

The settee and matching chairs were original to the house.

The main floor has four carrera marble fireplaces that the Bowers purchased during their 10-month stay in Europe.

There are no fireplaces on the second floor.

During the harsh winters, it's thought that Eilley and Persia moved to the main level and shared the guest bedroom located off the reception room, trying to keep warm with this decorative, but ineffectual, fireplace.

The piano has beautiful abalone keys and inlay.

It's one of 500 items donated after the mansion became an historical landmark.

Across the central hallway are the double parlors that are typical of the Georgian style.

The off-white rooms through which we pass were painted in the 1967 restoration.

They're not at all in keeping with the period.

>>Bedeau: The place was painted in colors that were much more in the keeping and taste of the 1960's and 70's and the perception of what a historic house would look like at that point.

So, that's why you see a lot of white.

That's why you see a lot of gilding.

That's why, uh, the house is, is done in a much lighter and brighter style than one would expect to see in a, in a 1860's house.

Uh, the, the mode of the day in the high Victorian period was very rich, very warm, very dark.

>>Betty Hood: It was a very dark period of time.

Wallpaper, none of the existing wallpaper of the Bowers, the original, remains in the Mansion at all.

Other owners pulled off as, as it was rotting or it was peeling, so they whitewashed the walls.

Rooms in those days, ah not just red and white as it is today.

Upholstery was very busy, very colorful.

Uh, draperies, we have a pair of draperies that had been down in this room, they're in Mrs. Bowers bedroom because there are only two rather than eight.

>>Carr: The front parlor is where the ladies were to have adjourned after a sumptuous dinner, while the gentlemen would have removed to the smoking parlor to light up cigars or pipes while downing a glass of brandy.

In reality, the Bowers Mansion had so few dinner parties, that these rooms may never have been used for the purpose they were built.

>>Hood: I know people would like to believe that there was great entertainment done in the Mansion.

I don't think so.

Virginia City was still the place for entertainment.

If Eilley did entertain, it was with close friends, I'm sure.

>>Carr: It's in the front parlor that one of Eilley's "peep stones" or crystal balls rests.

>>Susan James: She claimed to have the gift of second sight.

In other words, she, she used a crystal ball, or a peep stone, to peer into and through this she could learn about events of the future.

Um, according to the stories around her she was peering into the stone, even as early as her, uh, girlhood in Scotland, and seeing that she was destined to go on to greater things.

>>Carr: Throughout her life Eilley practiced her special abilities.

She would do readings for friends and neighbors, and her gift was readily accepted.

>>James: It was a centuries old tradition, nobody would've thought a thing about it.

And, at the time that Eilley was promoting herself as a seeress, a person who could look into the future, America was caught up in a spiritualist movement.

And, in a, in an economy that was based on mining, the ups and downs were so dramatic that people werex turning to a person such as Eilley Orrum to predict the future.

>>Carr: Nearby there's a photo of Eilley that has an image of a child suspended in the background.

Of course there are those that say this is one of the spirits with which Eilley communed - possibly her daughter, Persia.

Others say that it's an early - and extremely well done -- example of double exposure.

MUSIC >>Carr: The smoking parlor is separated from the front parlor by pocket doors.

These disappear into a graceful arch that is consistent with other archways in the house.

The high ceilings of the parlors are embellished with distinctive ceiling moldings and plaster medallions from which the chandeliers are hung.

The dining room is the first room in the southern wing that extends from the rear of the house.

The doorway leading from the parlor into this room is as thick as the exterior stone.

No definitive answer has been found regarding when these wings were built.

But that doesn't end the speculation.

>>Bedeau: If you look at the, at the two wings on the, on the rear of the, rear of the house, uh, you can see that they are attached to a very thick stone wall at the rear of the main body of the building, uh, which leads me to believe that they were not designed, but, in looking at the materials that were used, again, uh, rough, rough-cut stone, uh, locally quarried.

I think that they're fairly contemporaneous, uh, within, within ten or fifteen years of the original construction of the building.

MUSIC >>Hood: I do have a feeling that those two wings are the original to the house.

Bowers Mansion, two stories built with the fortune that they made, on the existing two wings.

That's the only way I've been able to account for that.

The two wings originally with the Cowans, when she was married to Alexander, but the front of the Mansion, built with the Bowers fortune as they became monied.

MUSIC >>Carr: A few pieces of the silver on the table belonged to the Bowers.

The rest is of the period.

When one looks at the furnishings of the house, it seems remarkable that there was such a lavish outpouring of antiques and financial support when this mansion was "saved" by the Reno Women's Civic Club in the 1940s.

They were intrepid women, determined to preserve a magnificent home and a colorful slice of Nevada History.

And they succeeded.

How could one not be attracted to the story of Eilley Bowers?

Such a remarkable, tenacious woman.

A woman of secrets.

A woman of sadness.

In Bowers Mansion we see the image of her Scotland.

Of the Georgian mansions of her youth.

Yet, unlike the wealthy in Great Britain, there are no rooms to house a nanny, a cook or a butler.

Eilley seemed to have been a combination of the frugal Scot and the Queen of the Comstock.

>>James: Eilley Orrum was born on the, the eastern side of Scotland in 1826.

Uh, as a teenager she married Stephen Hunter and, according to all of the stories around that relationship, he was an early convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

>>Carr: At age 21, Eilley emigrated to Salt Lake with her husband of six years.

But the marriage, for whatever reason, was dissolved shortly afterwards.

>>James: Eilley met another gentleman, Alexander Cowan, and, in Salt Lake City.

He was also a devout, uh, Mormon.

And, they were married in the early 1850's.

Ah when Brigham Young sent the, the Mormons to the western, the most western part of the great basin to establish new communities Alexander and Eilley Cowan came to that area which was then a part of Utah Territory.

First living at a Mormon Station in Genoa.

And, then later moving to, uh, Franktown where Alexander purchased, uh, over 300 acres of land.

And, that would eventually become the land the Mansion was built upon.

>>Carr: When Alexander returned to Salt Lake City, Utah Eilley chose to remain behind moving to Johntown, Nevada.

MUSIC >>Carr: Sandy Bowers was one of Eilley's borders.

Folklore states that another border gave Eilley a strip of land in exchange for back rent.

Regardless of whether that's fact or fiction, Eilley did end up with a 10-foot strip of the Ledge.

It happened to march alongside Sandy's claim.

In the summer of 1859 Sandy Bowers became Eilley's third husband, cementing a personal and business relationship.

Younger than Eilley by six years, Lemuel Sanford Bowers was a muleskinner from Illinois.

By all accounts he was well-respected, self-made, and a bit rough around the edges.

>>Hood: It wasn't an exciting, romantic marriage, I'm sure not.

But, I would say there was love there on both sides.

Definitely.

I just think their lives were so, so different once they became monied or fortune.

He working in Gold Hill, spending little time here.

She, living here and raising her daughter the best that she could.

MUSIC >>James: Well, the, the story of Eilley Orrum and Sandy Bowers is, um, probably one of the most famous rags to riches to rags stories from the Comstock era.

And, after they acquired their wealth, they came home from their grand European tour.

When they arrived Sandy found that his mine was not producing.

The timing was horrible.

Uh, a depression had set in in the mining district, the claims were not, were not producing ore of any, of any substantial amount, and they returned home to find a very depressed economy.

MUSIC >>Carr: Sandy died of Silicosis, a miner's disease of the lungs, in 1868.

He was 35 years old.

He left everything to Eilley, an estate that was fast dwindling, and debts he had incurred in an attempt salvage their income.

Though the Bowers were by many accounts good and generous people, their business acumen seemed shaky to say the least.

But Eilley, now 41, did her best to keep body and soul together.

After a little more than a year, her situation became dire and she petitioned the court to sell her Gold Hill properties, including the Bowers mine.

Her one remaining asset was the Mansion.

>>James: With this, this beautifull mansion and no way to support it.

So she really returned to her boarding house roots in a way, the thing she had done before their marriage, and opened up the mansion to people who were traveling, uh, through his part of northern Nevada.

And, it...developed, uh, she helped to develop such a fine reputation for the mansion that people were stopping all the time.

Uh, it, it became a destination resort.

>>Carr: Perhaps she would have continued on this course, if she hadn't lost her one remaining family member.

Persia, who had been placed in a school in Reno to separate her from the party atmosphere, succumbed to appendicitis.

Persia, Eilley's beloved daughter, was only 12.

MUSIC Carr: Due to the high ceilings throughout the house, the staircase to the second floor is long and fairly steep.

The last four or five steps ascend in a graceful curve.

The hallway is spacious with doors at both ends to catch the winds that wend through Washoe Valley..

Here, close to the landing is a spacious room that is now called a music room.

In the Bowers day it was a billiard room.

One wonders at the idea of a rousing game of pool while the household was trying to sleep.

But they, was Sandy even at home long enough to play a game of pool?

During the forties and early fifties an impressive pool table was housed in this room.

It wasn't the original, but one that was donated.

After architects expressed concern for the sagging floors - the table weighed one ton - it was disassembled and taken to the library in the lower wing of the house.

It's still there today.

The paneling in this room is an excellent example of the faux painting that was the rage during the 1860s.

If one's woodwork didn't have quite the grain hoped for, it could be added by an artist's brush.

MUSIC >>Carr: There are three bedrooms on this floor - one for Eilley, one for Sandy and one for Persia.

Sandy Bowers' bedroom was next to the billiard room.

It consists of two areas connected by an archway.

Both spaces are fairly compact.

The bedroom set is original to the home.

MUSIC >>Carr: And one might conclude that this welcoming space is very similar to how it appeared during Sandy's lifetime.

Though it's likely that Sandy rarely, if ever, was here to appreciate it.

Across the hall Eilley had an identical room.

Two rooms connected through an archway.

MUSIC One of the very worn curtains is a survivor from the front parlor, and is the only item originally from the house.

MUSIC >>Carr: Next there was a short hallway where two doors open into the rooms used by Persia.

MUSIC During the 1960s restoration completed by architect Edward Parsons, a staircase was removed from this hall.

It led up to the cupola from which the view must have been magnificent.

MUSIC >>Carr: Eilley lost the mansion in a Civil suit in 1875.

Myron Lake was the first owner of the Bowers Mansion after Eilley admitted defeat.

He bought it for $10,000, an amount that didn't quite satisfy all the liens on the house.

In the next few years, the house was passed among seven different owners.

None of them lived there.

None of them cared for the deteriorating structure.

The house was repeatedly vandalized.

MUSIC >>Carr: When the Riters finally purchased the home in 1903, it was in a sad state of disrepair.

From 1916 until 1946 the Riters operated the Mansion as a public park.

MUSIC >>Carr: Eilley left the mansion shortly after Lake purchased it.

The newspapers continued to print stories - largely untrue - about her life.

The dethroning of the Queen of the Comstock made good copy.

She had nothing left of the fortune that had made her one of the first Comstock millionaires.

>>James: She moved to Virginia City where she actually hung out her shingle and advertised herself as, as a person who could see into the future.

She became known as the Washoe Seeress.

And, she made a fairly decent living telling the fortunes of the wealthy individuals who came to her.

Of course, everyone in Virginia City was looking for the next big mining boom.

And, Eilley Orrum was no, notable as one who could predict, or at least she acquired a reputation as one who could predict this.

She also predicted that Virginia City would be devastated by a, a huge fire.

And, indeed, that did happen at the end of October 1875.

And, that prediction which did come true seemed to cement her reputation as a fortune teller.

Eilley was able to eke out a living as a, as a fortune teller.

Her health was in decline.

Uh, over the years her hearing started to, um, diminish.

So, she was not able to consult because she couldn't hear the question in the first place.

And, so she floated back and forth, a lot of the people who were writing about her at this time said she was a pathetic character.

Uh, she had had this huge fortune at her disposal, she lost the fortune, she lost the people who meant the most to her, and now she had nothing.

In 1903, she died totally destitute.

She had nothing left of that fortune that made her one of the first Comstock millionaires.

>>Carr: In Eilley's later years she moved between San Francisco, Reno and Virginia City.

In 1894 she joined the "1849 Camp" at the Midwinter Fair in San Francisco.

Log-cabin living brought back memories of her youth, and she enjoyed cooking for the miners and telling fortunes.

MUSIC >>Carr: But time progressed, and Eilley's health declined.

After one last trip to Nevada during which she hoped to raise money, she was returned to San Francisco by train.

In 1903 she died at the King's Daughters Home in Oakland California.

>>Carr: On their European tour, it's said that Eilley requested an audience with Queen Victoria.

Perhaps she thought her millionaire status would make a social call appropriate.

At any rate, she had an elaborate ball gown made in anticipation of the event.

But the Queen refused the audience, saying she was still in mourning for her beloved Prince Albert.

Some speculate that the prudish Victoria would have nothing to do with the thrice married Eilley...Queen of the Comstock or no.

If you'd like to know more about the Bowers Mansion, or any of the houses in our series, go to our website knpb.org.

Until next time, preserve the architecture and enjoy the heritage in your neighborhood.

House with a History is available on DVD in a three volume set.

Each volume contains three episodes.

To order a copy call 1-775-784-4555 or order online at knpb.org MUSIC Major funding for this program was provided by the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs State Historic Preservation Office.

Additional funding was provided by Nevada Humanities