Sprague, Charles S.

Charles Sprague was born in Ohio in 1865, the son of W. P. Sprague, a United States Congressman. After graduating from college, he bought and edited a local newspaper. In 1890 he moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado where he founded the Colorado Springs Evening Telegraph, and the Mining Investor, and served in the state legislature. In 1904 he was the editor of the Denver Rocky Mountain News. He came to Goldfield, Nevada in 1905 and leased the Goldfield News in 1906 from its then owner, J. P. Loftus, and served as its editor and manager of its parent Goldfield Publishing Company, which built the Goldfield News Building, a $100,000 office building in downtown Goldfield. Sprague was President of the Goldfield Chamber of Commerce, ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 1910, and served as a state bank commissioner. In 1912, he went into the mining brokerage business. As the self-proclaimed head of the "Sprague Interests," and "largest individual property owner in Goldfield," he acquired interests in and served as executive officer for a number of mining companies in Goldfield and Tonopah. After the collapse of mining in the 1920s, Sprague invested in cotton growing in the Las Vegas and Pahrump Valleys.