C. A. Earle Rinker Photograph Collection of Goldfield, Nevada (PH-00350)

Cleveland A. Earle Rinker was born in Indiana in 1883 to S. Cleveland Rinker and Isadora (Fenwick) Rinker. Shortly after his twentieth birthday Earle went to Parker, Indiana, to work as a stenographer, eventually working for Thomas Condon, a coal and oil dealer. Condon was also an enthusiastic investor in Nevada gold mines and, in the summer of 1906, he encouraged Rinker to seek his fortune there. In late October of 1906 Rinker boarded a train to make the journey to the newly established mining town of Goldfield, Nevada.

Rinker settled into Goldfield quickly, securing a job as a clerk in the brokerage office of MacMaster and MacMaster within 24 hours of his arrival in town. Earle's uncle, John W. H. Fenwick, helped him adjust to his new surroundings and a little over a month after Earle's arrival, two friends and former roommates from Indiana joined him in Goldfield. This small circle of

Daily life in Goldfield was in some ways quite different from that in Indiana, from the high price of subsistence items like water and eggs to the twenty-four hour gambling and drinking halls and periodic street shootings. Despite its remote location, Goldfield offered its residents many of the more mainstream diversions that were common in large cities of the time. Earle and his friends attended social dances, plays and musical offerings, enjoyed several high profile boxing and wrestling matches, went ice skating, and belonged to social clubs similar to those back home where Earle was a Mason. Special occasions included holiday parades, horse races, football games, the Great 1908 New York to Paris Auto Race, and other touring attractions that passed through Goldfield. Earle in particular also investigated the local terrain, climbing hills and mountains and occasionally exploring the area on horseback.

During Rinker's first winter Goldfield experienced an epidemic later called the Black Pneumonia, in which hundreds of people died. Earle was a victim of this illness but recovered after some months. There were also many conflicts between the miners and mining companies, which resulted in several labor union strikes. The longest running strike action began in 1906 and lasted until President Theodore Roosevelt sent in federal troops at the prompting of Nevada Governor Sparks.

Earle and many others in the boomtown often experienced the repercussions of the mining industry's instability. Being out of work for a length of time was very common. Earle worked in MacMaster and MacMaster's office for several months, but the loyalty and support of his employers could not compete with the town's flagging economy and he was forced to look elsewhere. He took another clerical position at Mohawk Ledge Mining Company, working for R. J. Shoemaker and Lincoln Davis, but soon lost that position as well when their office closed. In September of 1907 Rinker began working for the Goldfield Transfer and Trading Company; that same month a railroad strike halted almost all business activity in the town for over three months and Earle found himself out of a job yet again. By Christmas he was hired to clerk for Lincoln Davis at the Baby Florence Mining Company. That spring and summer the lack of office work forced Earle to take a position as "top man" at the Florence mining site, a job thathe found arduous and unappealing.

Frustrated by the shortage of work in his field and the depths to which the local stock markets had plunged, Earle Rinker left Goldfield in early October 1908. He traveled through parts of California, Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Upon rejoining his family in Daleville, Indiana, Rinker secured a position selling shoes in a department store. Rinker continued his efforts to secure more stable employment in various kinds of business, first working in the offices of a stockyard and a fertilizer plant in Chicago and later in other parts of Indiana. He married Vieune Prigg in February 1910 and the couple had four children: Eloise, Alice, Mary, and Thurman. The young Rinker family moved around the state following Earle's work. By November 1912 the Rinkers were living in Anderson, Indiana, farming and eventually operating a successful hardware business.

C. A. Earle Rinker passed away in Indiana in 1965 at the age of eighty-one.

Source:

C. A. Earle Rinker Papers, 1880-1960. MS-00514. Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries,

University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.