subs. (American).—A happy hit; a stroke of fortune; a success. [Spanish = a fair wind, fine weather, prosperous voyage.] BONANZA was originally the name of a mine in Nevada, which once, quite unexpectly, turned out to be a big thing, and of enormous value; now applied to any lucky hit or successful enterprise.
1847. Northern Mexico. The principal place for mining is at the foot of a naked granite mountain, the so called BONANZA—Wizlizenus.
1875. S. WILLIAMS, The City of the Golden Gate, in Scribner’s Monthly, x. July, 272. But a BONANZA with ‘millions in it’ is not struck every week.
1875. Boston Herald, March. The buyer of the lottery tickets is ever hopeful of a big BONANZA, that he may recover the thousands of dollars sunk during many years of indulging in this folly.
1876. Boston Post, 5 May. The recent rapid decline in BONANZA stocks in the San Francisco market has occasioned considerable uneasiness among the holders of these securities … A reporter interviewed Mr. Flood on the subject. The BONANZA king was bitterly indignant at the means employed to depreciate his mines.
1876. New York Tribune, 2 March. The contract for the Legislative printing, awarded by the Controller to Parmenter, of Troy, has been generally regarded here as in the nature of a big BONANZA.
1888. San Francisco News Letter, 4 Feb. The mines along the veins running north and south, of which North Belle Isle is the center, are all stayers, and in the cast and west ledge Grand Prize has entered a body of ore which may develop into a BONANZA as big as the one which paid millions in dividends in years gone by.
