George “Devil” Davis

THE SURVIVING RECORDS of George “Devil” Davis reflect the contradictions and harsh judgments of Tonopah’s early years, and include language and attitudes that may be uncomfortable to modern readers.

Born in Missouri in 1869, George “Devil” Davis is generally regarded as the first African American resident of Tonopah. He was widely known as a joker and prankster and was described by contemporaries as “beloved by the entire community.” Industrious and ambitious, Davis became a recognized leader within Tonopah’s small Black community and eventually acquired his own establishment, the Eureka Saloon.

Beneath that public reputation lay a darker domestic life. Multiple witnesses later testified that Davis was an abusive husband, a fact that would become central to the events surrounding his death.

Davis and his wife, Ruth, came to Tonopah from Elko, Nevada. He was a familiar figure in town life and often at its center. When Black heavyweight boxing champion Joe Gans fought in Goldfield in 1906, Davis led a minstrel chorus, complete with banjos and guitars, that serenaded Gans at his hotel—an attention the boxer reportedly “enjoyed immensely.” After the fight, Ruth, who had a reputation as an excellent cook prepared possum “Tennessee-style,” for Gans and a group of community leaders. Thirty-six possums were specially shipped to Tonopah from Tennessee for the occasion, accompanied by sweet potatoes prepared in the Southern fashion.

In February 1907, several months before his death, Davis had been accused of serving as a “fence” for a gold high-grading operation in Goldfield, an allegation that further complicated his standing in the community.

In the early morning hours of June 22, 1907, Davis was standing at a crap table near the rear door of the Eureka Saloon when his wife, Ruth, entered the building shortly before 3 a.m. Without a word, she drew a Colt revolver and began firing. The saloon was crowded, and panic followed as patrons rushed for doors and windows. One stray bullet struck a bystander, Kitty Brune—despite the name, a man—in the ankle. Five shots were fired in total, four of them striking Davis in the back. As he fell, Ruth was reported to have said, “I told you I would get you.”

Davis had worked for four years as a porter at the Tonopah Club and was the father of a son from a previous marriage, who was asleep in the house at the time of the shooting. Testimony would later reveal that Ruth had threatened Davis’s life two weeks earlier. In addition to accusations of physical abuse, it was alleged that she shot him out of jealousy over other women.

Ruth Davis was brought to trial in mid-July, with District Attorney Patrick McCarran—later Chief Justice of the Nevada Supreme Court and a United States Senator—prosecuting the case. Witnesses testified that Davis had threatened to kill Ruth if she refused to “consent to join the girls leading a life of shame” in order to increase his income. Others stated they had seen him beat her on several occasions inside the Eureka Saloon primarily over her refusal to return to a life of prostitution.

After eighteen hours of deliberation, the jury failed to reach a verdict, and a second trial was ordered. That jury likewise struggled, and it was feared the county would bear the expense of a third proceeding. After forty-eight hours, however, a verdict was reached. On July 22, Ruth Davis was found guilty of manslaughter. Eleven jurors signed a petition urging the court to show extreme mercy in sentencing.

Ruth Davis was sentenced to one year in the state penitentiary. In pronouncing sentence, Judge O’Brien stated, “The evidence shows that the deceased was a bad and worthless man, but the evidence also shows that the defendant herself is a moral degenerate and a licentious libel upon her sex.” The language was harsh, even by the standards of the day.

Her sentence was later reduced for exemplary conduct, and in July 1908 she was released and returned to Tonopah—closing a case that left behind no simple villains or heroes, only the tangled wreckage of violence, reputation, and a boomtown’s rough justice.

The language quoted in this account reflects the words of contemporaries and the courts, and is reproduced here to accurately convey the historical record.