Historical Context
by Stephen Stough, July 15 2008, Washoe County, Nevada
"Sustained by curiosity, made eternal by sacrifice," -- S. Stough, 1989
Introduction
Today, Virginia City is the largest national monument in the United States. But, its true uniqueness derives from its impact on the world of the 19th and 20th centuries, its outstanding state of preservation, and the superb quality of its historical accounts in literature.
The mining region that grew up around the Comstock lode after 1859 produced the year-2008 inflation-adjusted equivalent of $600 Billion in precious metals over a period of a just a few years. The consequent flooding of the world market with silver in the 1860s had a global impact that we can understand by imagining what would happen today if an oil discovery in the United States of this magnitude were to be brought to market.
The Comstock silver strike accelerated the entry of Nevada into the Union (1864) in order to secure those riches for the Northern side in the American Civil War. It also depressed the value of silver-based currency in the German states, placing stress on the Prussian economy, and became one of the factors that increased popular support for the Franco-Prussian war. The settlement of that war, including the transfer of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany, and the payment of reparations by the French, established the modern nation-state of Germany and led to a period of long-standing enmity between the two countries that, in turn, reduced the popular resistance to war in 1914.
When an even bigger silver bonanza was struck in 1873, Germany demonetized silver. Records of the British Parliament in 1874-1875, for example, make it clear the degree to which the worldwide devaluation of currency was on the minds of governments. (Much of the German silver was sold in Russia and India, it turns out).
Beyond the global impact of the silver strike, the Comstock takes on unique historical interest because so much of it survived to the present day. Virginia City, Gold Hill, and Silver City have been inhabited continuously since the 1860s -- although very thinly at times. As a living community, and the seat of Storey County, infrastructure has been preserved that otherwise would have been lost as an artificially-preserved ghost town. The cemeteries have been tended, the roads maintained, there is municipal water and sanitary service, and the population is stable. Brick and wooden structures that long ago would have collapsed have been maintained by their occasional owners. The relatively dry climate preserved those structures during periods of abandonment. After 130 years, many of the wood foundations are giving way, but fortunately most buildings are occupied and their owners are making the kinds of improvements that simply could not reasonably be expected from any sort of government- or volunteer-funded preservation society.
People survived on the margins in most mining camps. By contrast, a good portion of the wealth produced on the Comstock Lode stayed in the local economy. At one time, Virginia City was one of the largest settlements in the Western United States. A stock market was established. Schools, churches, bars, and theatres grew up, not in temporary structures, but in substantial constructions, many of which we see today.
The combination of wealth and excitement drew talented and prolific writers such as William Wright (Dan de Quille) and Samuel Clemens, and self-created newspapermen such as Alfred Doten. The daily lives of the inhabitants were recorded in fabulous detail along with equally fabulous fabrications of wild west events that never really happened.
Geologic Origins
The noble metal, gold, immune to corrosion in our common experience, dissolves in water-based solution under great temperature and pressure. Water, heated by magma a few miles below the earth's surface, circulates though large masses of rock, whereby it leaches minerals into solution, including gold and other metals, as well as halides (salt-forming elements) and important minerals such as sulfur and silicates. If a breach forms in the overlying solid rock, such as a vertical fissure, the solutions move towards the surface and begin to cool, which in turn precipitates out the minerals dissolved in the water. By this process, minerals such as reduced elemental gold and silver sulfide, become concentrated by several orders of magnitude over their original concentrations in the earth.
One such large fissure reaches down towards an ancient magma pool beneath the thin crust of the Nevada basin, just a few miles east of the steep escarpment of the Sierra Nevada range, near the western border with California where it runs through Lake Tahoe. The fissure breaks the surface on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson. Gold-bearing quartz veins, exposed by erosion, disintegrated and washed southward and eastward in the bottom of ravines that terminated on the desert floor near present day Carson City and Dayton, Nevada. These outflows are both less than two miles from the Carson River, which was a natural route of human migration between Utah and California and the interior of Nevada.
It is therefore not surprising that gold was discovered in a small alluvial plain in 1859, just five years after the founding of the settlement at Genoa, 15 miles south of Carson City. Once gold was discovered at the bottom of the canyon, it did not take long for the prospectors to work their way steadily up stream until they transected the main gold-bearing ledge high above.
Travelers coming from Lake Tahoe over the Mount Rose Highway can look across the Paradise Valley to the western, undeveloped "back side" of Mt. Davidson. From that unique perspective, the mountain range clearly has two cone-shaped tops, which stimulates the imagination to the vision of a volcano streaming out steam and ash. And within the those clouds, perhaps in an eruption lasting hundreds or thousands of years, were poisonous sulfur compounds. Sulfur readily oxidizes silver into a blue-black ore.
Some time passed before any of the gold prospectors realized that the blue-black muck that they were throwing away and using for road paving was that nearly pure silver ore.
Mine production reached its peak in 1877 and declined precipitously thereafter. Within just three years, the lode was considered to be played out. Reprocessing of tailings occurred sporadically after 1880; finally ending in the 1920s. The 1884 deepest shaft reached 3,200 feet beneath the headframe. Most of the shafts along the lode were driven far below the local water table and deep into the aquifers that underlay the desert floor between the mountain ranges. Without continuous pumping, the shafts filled with water within hours. This added to the difficulty and expense of mining to the degree that only substantial ore veins could be profitable and the mines could not be sustained over a long period of time, even if ore was still being extracted.
From time to time, when the price of gold reaches a peak, open-pit mining resumes for a few weeks or months. In 2007, with gold bringing $1,000 an ounce on the open market, mining companies argued for permission to destroy the historic Gold Hill Depot and the houses at the adjacent Greiner's Bend to enlarge an open mining pit. (The approval was not granted).
Establishment and Boom Years
The first serious efforts at prospecting the alluvial plain at the mouth of the canyon (later called Gold Canyon) that runs south from Virginia City was in 1852. A small group named their encampment Johntown. The more-prominent founders of the settlement included Henry (Old Pancake) Comstock and James Finney, who called himself "Old Virginny." These are the principals whose names became attached to the Comstock lode and Virginia City.
Gold production was steady but not considered a major strike, at least up through 1856. No gold rush precipitated from these early diggings, even though the piedmont of the Sierra Nevada mountains less than 50 miles distant were thick with prospectors hoping for major new strikes after the easy pickings from the 1849 gold rush had been taken.
While all this was happening, two brothers from Utica, New York, well-educated, well-financed, and well-equipped, discovered a major silver strike in the vicinity. Their east coast financier was killed by a robber and the brothers were unable to continue the dig when the money ran out. They never revealed the location of the lode before they died of injuries and frost-bite. It was to take another 13 years before the silver was rediscovered.
Working up Gold Canyon, James Finney and Henry Comstock found the primary source of gold in the form of surface outcroppings at what is now Gold Hill. Soon, Johntown was emptied out and intense prospecting started at Gold Hill.
A spur of Mt. Davidson runs east-southeast of the peak, and this spur forms a ridge that divides Gold Hill from what later became Virginia City. On the north side of this divide runs Six Mile Canyon from the site of Virginia City down towards Dayton to the east. This latter canyon was being worked by two Irishmen, Peter O'Riley and Pat McLaughlin at the same time that the Gold Hill discovery was made. Six Mile Canyon produced highly concentrated gold ores. In both diggings, the gold was contaminated by "blue stuff," that the miners simply threw away.
It was not until an outsider, a rancher from the Reno area, took a sample of the "blue stuff" a hundred miles away to Placerville, California to be assayed in 1859, that anyone had any idea of its value. It was assayed at several thousand dollars per ton in silver and gold. This assay triggered the rush to the Comstock lode and Gold Hill, Virginia City, and Silver City burst into life. By 1862 there were 82 stamp mills along the Carson river, a year later there were a total of 100. The explosive growth in population led the locals to establish Virginia City as an incorporated town on January 18, 1861 within the territory of Utah. Seven weeks later, Nevada was organized into a separate territory and became a state on October 31, 1864. Virginia City's population reached 20,000, with at least another 5,000 living in Gold Hill and Silver City to the south.
Connecting to the World Community: The Virginia and Truckee Railroad
Ore processing mills were scattered around the region, but by far the greatest concentration was along the Carson river, 13 miles to the south of the Comstock. The river provided power, water and a place to dump the cyanide, mercury and poisonous amalgams that resulted from the processing.
Gold Hill looking west, 1873. Yellow Jacket mine in center, main street and store fronts at bottom.
The purest of the ores near the surface were quickly exhausted. The deep-shaft mining required to follow the narrow ore vein into the earth always needed much more capital than the placer mining so common across the Sierras in California. The financiers from San Francisco that supplied much of the required capital for the mines were acutely aware that the total cost to raise, transport, and refine each ton of ore was making the mines unprofitable. In particular, the drayage costs from Virginia City to the Carson river were becoming prohibitive as the concentration of precious metals declined.
Two mitigations were possible: Dig deeper into the ore vein to follow the richest concentrations of metal or build a much lower cost transportation system. The mining community in general naturally followed the first path, but it took a centralized authority to solve the transportation problem.
The Virginia & Truckee railroad was created with the sole purpose of reducing the transportation costs from the mines to the mills, and to haul supplies from the eastern slope of the Sierras up to the mines. The region was actually already going through hard times in 1869 when the V&T Railroad was incorporated, for the reasons just mentioned.
The railroad was constructed very quickly. From the time of initial grading in February, 1869 only ten months passed before the track itself reached the current site of the Gold Hill depot on November 12, 1869. The editor of the Gold Hill News, Alf Doten, wrote in his diary:
"Cloudy, chilly & blustery -- up at 8 & down to Fred Smith's rooms (sup't of the Sierra Nevada) -- took breakfast there with him and his wife, then rode out with him in his buggy to the Sierra Nevada mine... rode on 'bus to Gold Hill at 1 PM the track layers finished railroad to Crown Point Ravine, & at 5 PM in presence of big crowd the two construction trains passed over the big trestle bridge -- Brass band playing on first locomotive -- flags flying everywhere -- big gun of Ft. Homestead firing, whistles all blowing, people cheering, and hell of a noise generally.... Track will be laid across Main St tonight."
At first, because the railroad was designed for freight transportation and terminated at Carson, it made little difference in the social communication between Virginia City and the rest of the world. A fast horse and buggy could make it through from Virginia to Carson in two hours. Passengers could expect to take 2-1/2 hours to go by the luxury of the train. Virginia City was already about as well-known as any place on the planet could expect to be.
Little more than two years later, the railroad was extended to Reno to connect with the Central Pacific. Had that connection never been made, it is possible that Virginia City, Gold Hill and Silver City would have faded into ghost towns like so many other mining boomtowns across the west. With the comparatively-comfortable and rapid transportation that the V&T railroad provided, tourism to the Comstock became possible for a much wider audience. Businesspeople and politicians who needed to be in, or be seen at, the diggings could do so.
The so-called Big Bonanza was struck in March of 1873, a year after the connection of the V&T line to Reno. It was frequently reported that the strike, of several large silver veins in Gold Hill, produced $300M in then-year silver and gold. (The actual value was probably less than half that.) But by the time a great fire swept through Virginia City in October of 1875, the lode was already approaching exhaustion. The V&T provided the transportation of materials needed to reconstruct the town. Had the railroad not existed, the falling silver production from the mines and the cost of drayage of materials might well have conspired to prevent the reconstruction of Virginia City after the fire, and we would have very little to look at as tourists today.
If the railroad was instrumental in the continuation of Virginia City as a settlement after the 1875 fire, it was even more important -- actually essential -- in its preservation after the mines gave out in 1880. By 1880, Virginia City had already become a tourist destination. Writings from the New Oakland Tourist and Pacific Coast Guide, for example, show the degree to which the town had been romanticized. Without a rail connection, the Comstock would have been memorialized as the "last stand of the California pioneers" where the "romance of the the Comstock will never die" (The History of the Comstock Lode, Nevada State Bureau of Mines). However, it might well have never been preserved by the tourism that sustained it.
Many dignitaries rode the V&T to Virginia City, even after the silver boom had come to an end. President Ulysses S. Grant visited in 1879. Two other retired Presidents and Teddy Roosevelt also came by train to see the place where so much wealth had been produced in such a short time.
The V&T was therefore a significant element in sustaining the town between the end of the Big Bonanza and the advent of personal motoring and good roads in the 1920's.
The importance of the railroad over such an extended period of time gives a perspective on why preservation of its artifacts and structures is held in such high regard by locals, readers of history, and rail fans worldwide. Of the major original structures from 1869 - 1873 not destroyed by fire, decay or human hands, as of the close of the 20th century, that are associated with the V&T railroad on the Comstock there were only a handful: The Gold Hill Depot, the Virginia City passenger depot (now a private house), and the Virginia City freight depot on E Street. All but the Gold Hill Depot are in private hands.
Gold Hill also possesses four structures important to historic preservation: The Gold Hill Hotel, the Bank of California building, the Gold Hill Depot, and the Yellow Jacket mine. The Gold Hill Depot belongs to the County of Storey. The hotel is an operating entity. The bank was opened by private parties in the 1990s as a museum. The Yellow Jacket mine has been made structurally sound and could easily be turned into an operating museum.
These are the reasons that the Gold Hill Historical Society has given priority to the preservation of the Gold Hill Depot.
Progression of the Historic Preservation Effort
The fundamental preservation problems on the Comstock are:
- The boundaries of the county of Storey were somewhat "shrink-wrapped" around the Comstock. The county is therefore small in area, isolated, and has until recently had no significant means of support outside of tourism and mining. Local funds for historic preservation have been few to nil. Fortunately, adjacent counties and the State have contributed greatly to preservation efforts, but only for major, key projects, not for year-to-year maintenance or operations
- The altitude (6,200 ft.) combined with a lack of atmospheric moisture causes the night time temperatures to fall below freezing six or more months of the year. The freeze-thaw cycle steadily disintegrates mortar, concrete and wood anytime moisture is present. Forty-degree (Fahrenheit) diurnal temperature swings assure that all rigid materials work against their foundations, eventually becoming loose from their fastenings or weak from fatigue. The dryness of the summer climate causes wood to turn into a sort of paper mesh, window putty to rock pebbles, and glues to dust.
- Almost all historic structures, artifacts, and the lands on which they exist are distributed across many private holders; more than one of them living at the economic margins.
- The topography helps preservation in some ways (limited road access reduces pressures for development). But in other ways, it diminishes tourism. Virginia City sits on a very steep slope. Tourists have difficulty making it up and down the cross streets and prefer to park on the central thoroughfare (C Street); which is self-limiting to about 250 cars at any one time. Tourism revenues are naturally restricted.
Preservation efforts have been many in number, but mostly small and ad hoc. Serious efforts started in the 1930's, and by 1936, when the V&T railroad was considering abandonment, there was a flurry of rail fan excursions and visitation. But, between 1936 and 1976, much of what was the Comstock went into a state of either rapid decay or fossilization. Almost all of of the wooden structures in Gold Hill, for example, collapsed in the 14 years period after the closure of the ore reprocessing mill in American Flat in 1924. V&T locomotive #27 sat behind a chain link fence on E Street until 1992, when it was moved first to the V&T shops and then to Gold Hill by people who later founded the Gold Hill Historical Society. (The locomotive was appropriated under armed guard by the Nevada State Railway Museum in Carson City shortly thereafter).
One of the passengers on the last (1936) excursion to Virginia City was a young Bob Gray, who went on to re-create the V&T Railroad from Virginia to Tunnel #4 near Gold Hill forty years later.
Until the turn of the 21st century, almost all preservation efforts were conducted by private parties or independent volunteer groups. The county provided easements for access or railroad construction, but rarely any cash. It was during this time that predecessors to the Gold Hill Historical Society were busy preserving railroad artifacts (V&T locomotive #27, 1975), making minor repairs to the Gold Hill Depot as funds would allow, and opening the depot for tourists on summer weekends. Over this same period, private parties had restored and/or opened structures on the Comstock to customers, if not outright tourism per se: Piper's Opera House, the livery stables on B Street (now re-opened as an antique shop after 15 years of abandonment), the Gold Hill Hotel, the bank building at Gold Hill (open for a short time as a private museum), and the freight depot at Virginia City.
This all changed with the approval of the use of federal grants (1998) and sales tax revenues for a total of approximately 35M in track construction (estimate through 2009) to extend the V&T railroad from Gold Hill to the Carson River. This major intervention of public money changed the preservation prospects from one of slow decay to the opening of the possibility of creating a world-class historic attraction at Virginia City and everywhere along the restored railroad line.
The Gold Hill Historical Society (1994) was perhaps the strongest single volunteer organizational influence in pushing through the railroad extension funding approvals of 2004.
Strategic Futures Planning
Today, the members of the Gold Hill Historical Society have set themselves a goal of planning for, and coordinating, the transformation of the area into an immersive historical experience. The GHHS is tackling all of the historic preservation problems mentioned earlier, plus other impairments to tourism and worldwide recognition that need to be removed if the full potential of the investment in the re-creation of the V&T Railroad is to be realized.
From a preservationist point of view, the Comstock is blessed by a lack of water that effectively stops any significant commercial development. Virginia City is supplied by an inverted siphon (800 pound-per-square-inch high-pressure, gravity-fed pipe), 11-1/2 inches in diameter, and running 7 miles. The source is Marlette Lake, about 1,500 ft. higher in elevation than Virginia City, but on the other side of Washoe Valley. The bottom of the valley is at about 4,500 ft. elevation; nearly 3,000 ft. lower than Marlette Lake. The pipe was constructed of rolled, square iron sheets riveted together (with nearly a million rivets), and became operational in 1873. (Shamberger, Hugh A., 1969, "Historic Mining Camps of Nevada: Water Supply for the Comstock")
A total of three pipelines were eventually constructed. This remains the sole water source for Virginia City and Gold Hill.
There are no private wells on the Comstock within the service area of the water company. Small amounts of water are available in the aquifers underlying the basin floor at a depth of 1,200 to 1,600 ft. below the current settlement area; but the hydrology is not expected to yield sufficient annual flow to support the current towns of Virginia City and Gold Hill, much less any expansion.
American Flat, adjacent to Gold Hill, is an area of about 900 acres that could be ideal for housing development, but there appears to be no feasible means to supply it with water. By a previous act of the County Council, American Flat was excluded from the Virginia City and Gold Hill Water Company service area.
Similarly, the ability to expand the numbers of hotel rooms, or even to develop the many vacant lots below F Street in Virginia City, is quite limited for lack of water. (Reference the Storey County Master Plan).
And yet some considerable amount of commercial development is needed and
expected in order to increase local tax revenues, both for historic preservation
projects and for upgrading the tourist experience. Much of this
development is expected to be undertaken by for-profit companies that, it is
hoped, will locate along the lengthened right-of-way of the Virginia & Truckee
Railroad between
Gold Hill and Carson City.
But, at present, there is no such augmentation plan for peripheral businesses to accompany the expanded railroad to the Carson River.
An example is the lack of public toilet facilities anywhere in the region -- except for some very poorly-maintained units at the far northern end of C Street in Virginia City. One of the most-frequently heard comments by tourists boarding the train at the F Street (Virginia City) station for the 2.2 mile journey to Gold Hill is, "I sure hope there is a restroom at Gold Hill." There is not. To expect patrons to embark on a one hour or longer train trip (each way) with no restroom facilities at either end of the line is delusion.
The capital cost of construction of such restrooms is not provided in the V&T reconstruction plan, nor is it in any planning of Storey or Lyon Counties. (And historic reconstruction grant funds are not applicable to building restrooms).
Similar constraints apply to the potential construction of new depot facilities and museums: There is presently no planning for them and no way to fund these public capital projects without there being an increase in the tax rates or tax base. The ability to increase tax rates in Storey County is small to none.
But, even if the capital is found, there must be a permanent increase in the tax base to pay for facilities operations and maintenance. Public restrooms, for example, require on-site janitorial staff.
The main thoroughfare in Virginia City, C Street, is awash with cars and motorcycles. Any sense of history is hidden behind these anachronisms. Parking is plentiful, but not along the main route, and the hillsides are so steep that many visitors struggle to climb from their cars up the one or two very short side streets to the shops and boardwalks of C Street.
Any form of historic re-creation event is unrealistic when conducted on a modern street. It is not possible to suspend disbelief and immerse oneself in the action when the setting is modern, choked with cars and motorcycle exhaust noise, while watching a battle between Capt. Storey's militia and the Pah-utes, regardless of the quality of their costumes or acting ability.
Public drunkenness on the boardwalk is not as common as might be thought, but there is some, and there are usually people on weekends walking up and down the boardwalk with open containers of alcohol. Fun for some, but not legal and it makes families nervous and anxious to move on.
There is only sufficient parking for five or six tour busses at a time adjacent to C Street. So, even better coordination of visits to the Comstock with other venues in the Reno/ Tahoe area is not going to be very effective with this level of infrastructure shortfall.
Better enforcement of public-conduct laws, ongoing maintenance, restoration work, and cleaning of public spaces all require more revenue than currently available.
As a non-profit organization, the GHHS is well-positioned to act as an un-biased coordinating group between other agencies, commissions, private parties, and venture capitalists. It is, in fact, perhaps uniquely positioned to serve as a host, facilitator and coordinator of long-term, multi-party discussions with the objective of transforming the Comstock into a world-class immersive historic entertainment venue similar to the approach taken by Historic Williamsburg (Virginia) or better; while at the same time maintaining fidelity to the history of the Comstock.
Last updated July24th, 2008