Introduction

The Johnny Harris exhibit in the Sandon Museum. (Greg Nesteroff photo)

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The historian to whom Maltz passed along the Cultreras’ contact information was me. I’d become interested in confirming or debunking stories that emerged from the great Sandon fire of 1900 and, by extension, folklore about the city in general. By virtue of Johnny Harris’ prominence, he popped up repeatedly, practically with a mythology of his own. Several oft-repeated claims, I discovered, were false, but some of the most incredible ones were true.

 

Only a few months before the Cultreras visited Sandon, I’d made a major breakthrough. Like Rob Riley, a Johnny Harris biographer before me, I couldn’t understand why there was no obvious sign of Johnny in Loudoun County, especially since he was said to be from a well-to-do family there. I found his birthplace of Vernon Mills, but it was in Fauquier County, and there didn’t seem to be a Harris family associated with it. It was instead the longtime home of the Smith and Davis families.

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I remained baffled until I read a brief history of Vernon Mills, compiled in 1937 and placed online by the Library of Virginia, which included a transcription of births and deaths from a family bible. Among the various Smiths and Davises listed was a John Morgan Davis, born January 26, 1864.

 

After a couple of re-readings, the penny finally dropped.

 

That was John Morgan Harris’ birthday.

 

He changed his name.

 

This discovery, it turned out, was inevitable through other sources, but now the floodgates to Harris’ early life swung open.

 

The question became: Why did he adopt an alias? Diane Cultrera soon found the surprising answer, one of the secrets that came to form the backbone of this book.

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At first blush, Johnny Harris appeared to be a Southern gentleman. But his natty dress and soft accent belied the roguishness of his character. He was a litigious man, often ruthless in his business dealings, and at times truly reckless.

 

Johnny worshipped at the altar of capitalism. He practically owned all of Sandon: the townsite itself, as well as most of the principal buildings, the power plant, and the waterworks, all paid for through his various mining interests. He was also the city’s chief booster. But this interest wasn’t entirely or even mostly altruistic; the entire town was a monument to himself.

 

Stubborn? Oh, was he ever. “He was a man that had a mind of his own,” said one person who got along with him well. “If he thought something was right, you couldn’t change him. … He would go to the limit of anything to prove his point.”

 

Although capable of generosity, it was always on his own terms. He was more often found in court, aggressively enforcing his property rights or otherwise protecting his affairs. He was the king of Sandon, but his subjects didn’t always see his rule as benevolent.

 

Later, as his kingdom crumbled, Johnny refused to leave. He appeared to mellow, and those who met him in his twilight years would have found it hard to reconcile this genteel old man with the hard-nosed businessman he had once been—let alone the most deplorable parts of his past, which he kept to himself.

 

For good or ill, Johnny Harris was a fascinating, larger-than-life figure, in spite of his small stature. And his story is Sandon’s story: part colonial imperialism, part Old West melodrama, part boom-and-bust saga, part cautionary tale, part rebirth and restoration. But we’ll begin at a turning point in the city’s history, when for a moment it appeared all was lost.