The Monnette Hayes Lease of the Mohawk Mine, Goldfield Nevada

Monnette's taking the gamble on the Mohawk Mine property based largely on the opinion of Granville H. Hayes, a miner of some experience, who was convinced that the unsuccessful mine harbored the key to a portion of untapped ore.   Two previous parties had attempted mining at Mohawk with minimal results.  In fact when Hayes inspected the mine he noticed that the shaft and tunnels had been "salted" in an attempt to make the mine look more attractive. 

Mervin J. Monnette raised $10,000 which was needed to get the mine back into operational status and that stake would eventually be raised to $25,000. According to his son Orra E. Monnette, Mervin and Hayes performed a great deal of work in the mines themselves with cash being lean while work progressed.

The gold ore strike at Mohawk Mine occurred in April, 1906.  The strike made headlines in the west was covered in the June 29,  July 13, 1907 issues of the Saturday Evening Post by Rex Beach in his articles "Madmen of the Desert".  Beach described the strike as "...a chamber of  ore containing wealth enough to realize the dreams of Croesus."  The Hayes Monnette Lease operation would pull an excess of over four to five million dollars ($4-5,000,000) in gold ore from the mine.  

While $4-5 million dollars may not seem like a great of money in current terms, in 1907 it made Monnette and Hayes wealthier beyond all comprehension.  According to John J. McCusker, author of "How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States," (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 101, pt 2 (1992), pp. 297-373) the adjusted United States dollar from 1907 to 1989 (the last year available from McCusker's paper to me) would bring in the initial $4-5 million to $54,800,000 in terms of 1989 currency.

The discovery changed Monnette's life, the largest change being the relocation of his household to Los Angeles California.  Shortly thereafter, sister Amina Monnett Tobias and her husband retired Judge Cal Tobias joined Mervin after selling their house to him, which was then donated to the city of Bucyrus Ohio for use as a hospital known as Monnett Memorial.  Also joining Mervin & Olive Monnette was there son Orra E. Monnette, and Mervin's brother Melvin and Melvin's wife Ella Carmean.  Mervin Monnette stayed in the mining business with several other ventures including the Diamondfield Triangle Mining Company and the Monnette Wonder Mine, however neither of these delivered anything close to what had been discovered in April 1906.

Monnette and his son Orra used the mine's payout to finance a series of bank acquisitions and mergers culminating in the formation of Bank of America, Los Angeles in 1923, which was later merged with the A.P. Giannini's Bank of Italy (San Francisco) to form the modern day Bank of America NA.  While Giannini is given credit for the Bank of America, it was Mervin J. Monnette and his son Orra E. Monnette that in fact laid the ground work for the banking goliath.  After the merger, Orra E. Monnette remained at the Bank of America where he co-chaired the Board of Directors until his death in 1936.

Olive Hull Monnette, Mervin's wife of 43 years died in  California in 1912.  A second and short-lived unhappy marriage was followed by a happier union when he married Ethel Reed (nee Clark) in 1915.  Mervin J. Monnette survived Ethel by four years, dying in Los Angeles on March 29, 1931.  He is buried in Inglewood Memorial Park Glendale, California.

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