Virginia City

Virginia City is about a 30 minute drive from our campground in Carson City.  We packed our little soft-sided cooler with a couple cokes and a few snacks and fully intended to be home for a late lunch.  That didn’t happen.  We made a day of it in this old west town.

Number 1 mine at Silver City

I liked the drive up there almost as much as the town itself.  We drove through Silver City and Gold Hill passing what remains of the old mines.  In Gold Hill, we found the Gold Hill Hotel, the first hotel in the Comstock area.  There had been plenty of boarding or rooming houses, but this was the first real “hotel”.  It is a restaurant now.  Silver City is still a community with a post office, much to our surprise.

At the top of the mountain is Virginia City and underneath Virginia City was the Comstock Lode, the first major silver mine in the United States.  The Comstock Lode, discovered in the late 1850s eventually yielded $400 million in silver and gold.  Virginia City sprang up overnight after the discovery of silver in the area and almost vanished when the mine played out.  Today, there are about a 1,000 residents in Virginia City and we probably saw nearly all of them today as waiters and bartenders in the restaurants, clerks in the stores, or as locals dressed in period attire giving the streets of Virginia City a look of the past.

There are actually two sections in Virginia City, though without a practiced eye you wouldn’t notice.  There is the southern portion of the town which survived the great fire of 1875 and the northern end of town that was rebuilt in 1876 having been burned to the ground.  The main street consists of these old buildings which are maintained and offer the tourists almost anything they may want.  There are the saloons, of course, and this is still Nevada so there is gambling.  The shops sell everything from cheap trinkets to hand-crafted jewelry.  There are western wear shops selling mass manufactured denim to Stetson hats.  You may prefer a custom-made felt hat.   It was fun to step into a few shops just to finger the merchandise.  And if you’re into old building architecture, Virginia City has plenty of that.

One of the things we enjoy is peaking inside churches.  We noticed a sign outside the First Presbyterian which invited visitors to come on in.  We did.  We were sitting on the back pew enjoying the stained glassed windows, when a gentlemen wearing a T-shirt and shorts approached asking if we had any questions.  Gene had some question of another which the kind man answered, then he went into a discussion regarding the organs.  There were two, one in front and one in back.  Come to find out, this guy was the organist for the church and volunteered to play a little for us.  It was fantastic—our own little concert.  This gentleman (I have forgotten his name) was doing some work on the outside of the building and had gotten a splinter in his hand.  He came inside to take care of that injury when he found us there.  What a blessing he was to us and he is to his congregation.

We’ll be back on the trail tomorrow in the South Lake Tahoe area.