Nine prospectors led by Andrew A. Veatch organized the Cortez mining district in 1863 after finding silver in central Nevada's Cortez Mountains. Financier George Hearst invested heavily in the district's earliest development. After initially shipping ore to Austin, the miners constructed a Washoe Process pan amalgamation mill the following year and in 1865 installed Reese River Process equipment.

In 1849 while passing through the Great Basin to California, Abner Blackburn discovered gold at the junction of Gold Canyon and the Carson River, a place eventually called Dayton. He continued on his way, but his find marked the area for future exploration. The next year, placer miners began working gold-bearing sands in Gold Canyon.

Shortly after the news of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort in 1849 reached South China, Chinese gold seekers flocked to the Mother Lode in California. These men eventually migrated to the area now known as western Nevada. Present-day Dayton was originally called "Chinatown" because the Chinese had settled there in the 1850s in considerable numbers.

In 1856, the U.S. Army experimented with the importation of Middle-Eastern Dromedary (one hump) camels. Lt. Edward F. Beale maintained the animals could haul materials for the military in the arid West. They could carry more than horse or mules, and they had a legendary ability to survive without much water. Beale and roughly thirty camels crossed the Colorado River into present-day southern Nevada in 1857, but his experiment eventually failed, and the army sold what stock survived.