Related Guides

Popular Cities in Nevada

Most Popular

Travel Resources

ShoulderSeason

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Screensavers
share this article del.icio.us DIGG Facebook StumbleUpon

From Primedia Publications
Page:
1 2 

Virginia City
If the words Ponderosa and Bonanza sound familiar, chances are you know this Nevada town.

By Deke Castleman

The infamous Virginia City, a last vestige of the Wild West.
The big bang occurred in July 1859, ignited by a pair of placer-gold prospectors in the western Nevada desert. These miners, originally from Ireland, were lately from the California Mother Lode and were two of 50 or so hardy pioneers panning gold nuggets from a creek flowing down the desert hillside. High up on a small volcanic mountain near the creek-feeding spring, the Irishmen decided to dig right into the earth where, only a few feet down, they struck the purest sulphuret of silver to be discovered since the fabled Ophir Mines of King Solomon.

News of the silver had spread only a mile when, almost as if on cue, a loud-talking paper-waving dealmaker named Henry Comstock rode up on horseback, proclaiming the entire side of the mountain to be his “ranch.” Comstock not only demanded a piece of the profits but also proceeded to name the day-old mining district after himself. The obliging Irishmen cut him into a generous percentage, which he sold some months later for a few thousand dollars. Had Comstock held onto his share another year or so, his fortune would have been as large as his fame was wide.



A portrait of Henry Comstock can be seen today in the Ponderosa Saloon, one of a dozen old-time barrooms on C Street, the six-block boardwalked main drag of Virginia City that’s usually crowded with history buffs and day-trippers. Next to the namesake of the Lode is a portrait of the namer of the city. James Finney was a drunken prospector whose two loves were whiskey and his home state of Virginia. One night Finney smashed a bottle of hooch on a rock to christen the early Comstockers’ settlement; soon, all the miners called the tent camp Virginia Town. Once news of the silver strike reached California, 10,000 boomtowners rushed to Virginia Town, transforming it into Virginia City overnight.

Once news of the silver strike reached California, 10,000 boomtowners rushed to Virginia Town, transforming it into Virginia City overnight.
A more familiar face than Comstock’s or Finney’s also adorns the wall of the Ponderosa Saloon. Sam Clemens arrived in Virginia City in 1862 to take a job as city editor at a daily newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise. Though he later told a different story or two about the origin of his famed pseudonym, hereabouts it’s believed that he was nicknamed Mark Twain by barstool buddies for his habit of ordering two drinks at a time and telling the bartender to “mark twain” on his tab.

The window of the newspaper office, from which Twain surveyed the gaudy carnival of Virginia City, was the perfect vantage point for perfecting his singular style of frontier journalism. In Roughing It, he described the endless procession of pilgrims along C Street. “There were military companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theaters, hurdy-gurdy houses, wide-open gambling palaces, political powwows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill every fifteen steps, a board of aldermen, a mayor, a surveyor, a chief of police, two boards of mining brokers, a dozen breweries, and some talk of building a church.”

Today, Twain’s newspaper pressroom is the Territorial Enterprise Museum on C Street, with displays of old linotype and binding machines, hot-type cabinets and other antiquated printing technology. Down the street, a Mark Twain mannequin lectures from a desk reputed to be the author’s own at the Mark Twain Museum of Memories.

By the time Clemens left in 1864 (legend has it he snuck out of town one night to avoid a duel with someone he’d insulted in print), Virginia was already one of the most illustrious cities in the country—glamorous, affluent, magnetic. Perched precariously on a steep slope, the town was laid out along literal lines of wealth, class and race. Stewart, Howard, and A streets, highest up on the hill, flaunted the brick mansions of bankers and mine owners. Below on B Street were the homes and offices of the mine superintendents, stockbrokers, and lawyers. Today, the Castle on B Street epitomizes the luxurious milieu of the nabobs. This 16-room mansion survived the Great Fire of 1875 that burned 30 blocks and was sold only three times in its 130 years—with all its original furnishings intact. The tour is a vivid lesson in antique European craftmanship, with a 600-year-old Heidelburg sideboard, Italian alabaster urns, French wallpaper, Czech rock-crystal chandeliers, and Belgian lace, to name a few, all shipped around treacherous Cape Horn to San Francisco, then by wagon over the Sierra Nevada.

  Related Articles
 •  Virginia City Trip Planner
 •  Back to Old Hannibal
 •  Lincoln, New Mexico
 •  Skagway, Alaska



Next Page
Page:
1 2 


Deke Castleman, author of Nevada Handbook, makes Nevada's "outlandish" history his hobby. For a hilarious eyewitness account of early Virginia City, he recommends A Peep at Washoe and A Peep at Washoe Revisted by J. Ross Browne.