H. M. Yerington Papers

Henry Marvin Yerington was born in Calborne, Canada in 1828 and came to Nevada in 1863. He was actively involved in mining, lumbering, railroads, and land development in Nevada and California until his death in 1910.

H. M. Yerington is reported to have been president of sixteen different companies at one time and actively involved in forty. Among his earliest work was the construction of the Merrimac Mill for the crushing of Comstock ore, the first mill in Nevada to be so described. He was associated with D. O. Mills, William Sharon, and William C. Ralston in the construction of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. He is probably best known as the general superintendent and vice-president of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. He brought about the construction of the Carson and Colorado Railroad, completed in 1882, and was superintendent and president. The Carson and Colorado Railroad was sold to the Southern Pacific Company in 1900. Other companies he had interests in included Inyo Development Company and the Southern Development Company in Hawthorne, Nevada, the Carson Water Works; the Eldorado Wood and Flume Company that delivered a large portion of wood timber to the Comstock mining companies.

Yerington married Susan B. Hume, of Canada, in 1858. They had four children, but she died at the age of 36 in November 1874. In 1877 he married Clara V. Bender, the niece of Judge Edwin B. and Margaret and Mrs. Crocker, and they had one son. Yerington was a Mason, a leader in the Republican Party in Nevada and very influential in state politics. He died November 25, 1910.