It was a windy day in 1865. The Fairweather Inn sign was in a swinging competition with the Wells Fargo sign across the street. The leaves on the trees were singing their autumn songs and shedding their golden leaves on the ground. But the real gold was somewhere else. It was hanging in a cloth bag in Bummer Dan's pants. He had struck the payload at Alder Gulch and now, with enough money for a coach ticket to somewhere else, he was on his way out of Virginia City.

Dan McFaden's rise to wealth was actually a bit of an accident. Never having worked very hard for what he needed, he obtained the name Bummer Dan for bumming meals, bumming drinks and bumming sleeping quarters off the other miners. He wrote often in his journal about how wasteful it seemed to spend such large amounts of effort to obtain so little gold.

It was during one mining expedition when the others tired of his lazy ways, that his life changed. They gave him a pan, a shovel and a pick, pointed him up the hill and told him to go away. So Dan did. When he became tired of walking, he stuck his pick in the ground. It was at that spot that he struck gold, the mother load.

When Dan had enough for a stagecoach ticket, he left the city. He hoisted himself in the seat and wiggled until the bags of gold in his pockets, around his neck and in his pants were in comfortable positions. Then he settled back to rest his weary feet. Dan had taken extra precautions when leaving town by walking 20 mile to catch the coach. Trusting your neighbor was one thing, but harboring bags of pure gold under your clothes made it something else.

Unfortunately Bummer Dan never had the chance to spent his loot. On the way out of town, his coach was held up by two outlaws. Bummer Dan described it as the least amount of fun he ever got out of his hard earned money.