Virginia City
C Street
Virginia City, NV
The silver city that helped bankroll the Union, gave Mark Twain his pen name, and never quite let go of its boomtown swagger.
Virginia City was born in 1859, when miners working Six-Mile Canyon hit the Comstock Lode, one of the richest silver strikes in history. Within a few years a raw camp on a barren mountainside had become the largest, wealthiest city between Chicago and San Francisco, with an opera house, dozens of saloons, and mine shafts plunging thousands of feet into the mountain.
The silver and gold pulled from the Comstock between 1859 and the early 1900s ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, money that helped build San Francisco and, some argue, helped fund the Union in the Civil War. A young reporter named Samuel Clemens worked here for the Territorial Enterprise and first signed a story Mark Twain. The bonanza faded, but the town survived, and today it is one of the best preserved mining towns in the West.
What Guests Love
- Walking the wooden boardwalks of C Street past saloons, the old Territorial Enterprise office, and 1870s storefronts
- Going underground on a mine tour to feel how the silver actually came out
- The Virginia and Truckee Railroad steam train down toward Gold Hill
- The sweeping high-desert views from a mountainside town at over 6,000 feet
Worth Knowing
- It sits above 6,000 feet, so it is cooler and thinner-aired than the valleys, and winter brings real snow
- The main street leans into its Wild West tourism, which some love and some find kitschy; the deeper history is right underneath it
- The mountain road up from either direction is steep and winding, so take your time
- Many shops and tours run on a seasonal schedule, busiest in summer and quiet in the cold months
Details
Virginia City, NV
Learn about Virginia City
The Comstock Lode
In 1859, prospectors Pat McLaughlin and Peter O'Reilly found gold at the head of Six-Mile Canyon, but it was the heavy blue-gray mud clogging their sluices, cursed by the gold miners, that turned out to be nearly pure silver ore. The Comstock Lode, named for a miner who talked his way onto the claim, set off one of the great rushes of the American West.
The ore did not lie in easy surface veins. It ran deep and hot, which forced the Comstock's engineers to invent new ways to mine, including the square-set timbering that let them hollow out huge underground chambers without collapse. By the mid-1870s Virginia City ran around the clock, with a population commonly cited near 25,000, an opera house, churches, a red-light district, and mansions built on silver.
Where Mark Twain got his name
Samuel Clemens came to Virginia City in 1862 to write for the Territorial Enterprise, then one of the most widely read papers in the West. In its pages he first signed the pen name Mark Twain, a riverboat term for safe water, and honed the deadpan humor and tall-tale style that would make him famous.
The Enterprise was the heart of what later got called the Sagebrush School of frontier writers, a rowdy mix of real journalism, parody, and outright hoax. You can still find the paper's old office on C Street, part of a downtown that has changed remarkably little in silhouette since Twain walked it.
Underground and downhill
The story of Virginia City is really the story of what is under it: miles of tunnels, shafts, and stopes worked by crews from Cornwall, Ireland, China, Mexico, and beyond. Several mines offer tours today that take you into the rock and explain the timbering, the flooding, and the brutal heat that miners faced deep in the mountain.
The Virginia and Truckee Railroad, once the richest short line in the country for hauling ore and bullion, runs a heritage steam train on part of its old grade down toward Gold Hill. Riding it, or just walking the grade, is the easiest way to feel how this whole mountainside was once one great machine for pulling silver out of the ground.
Visiting the Comstock
The core of the visit is C Street, the boardwalked main drag, plus the side streets of churches, the old Fourth Ward School, and the cemetery terraces stepping up the hillside. Give yourself time to look past the saloon fronts to the 1860s and 1870s buildings underneath, and consider a mine tour and the railroad to round out the picture.
At over 6,000 feet, Virginia City is cooler than Reno or Carson City below, with warm summer days, crisp nights, and snowy winters. Summer and the fall events are the busiest and liveliest times; in the cold months many businesses run limited hours and the town goes quiet, which has its own windblown, end-of-the-boom charm.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Virginia City
Gold Hill and Silver City
About 1 to 3 miles south
The other Comstock camps just down the grade, with the historic Gold Hill Hotel and the ruins of the boom scattered along the canyon.
Carson City
About 15 miles southwest
Nevada's capital, with the old Nevada State Railroad Museum, the Capitol, and a walkable historic district.
Reno
About 25 miles north
The Biggest Little City, with the National Automobile Museum and the Truckee River running through downtown.