The day I used to be leaving Lake Tahoe the valet attendant steered I go to Virginia Metropolis. He stated it was a ghost city. I had by no means been to a ghost city, so after all I drove straight there. I did hit some severe climate on the way in which over, but it surely didn’t matter as a result of the Atlas can deal with any street circumstances.
About Virginia Metropolis
At its peak, Virginia Metropolis was a thriving, vibrant city with 25,000 folks. Silver and gold had been buried deep beneath her streets, and women and men traveled from world wide to stay and work. Miners pulled tens of millions of {dollars} from shafts and tunnels 3,000 toes beneath town. The spirits of these Comstock “originals” nonetheless inhabit the locations the place they as soon as labored, lived, worshiped, had been educated, and died. At the moment, it’s the right vacationer entice!
The Nineteenth-century mining bonanza turned Virginia Metropolis into a very powerful industrial metropolis between Denver and San Francisco, and it turned destitute prospectors from all around the world into millionaires. They constructed mansions, hospitals, church buildings, opera homes, and faculties, and imported furnishings, fashions, and leisure from Europe and the Orient. They helped finance the Civil Battle, and went on to construct empires world wide. Among the many most interesting examples is San Francisco, a metropolis constructed with Comstock silver.
The 4 mines: Ophir, Gould, Curry and Consolidated Virginia mines made up the “Massive Bonanza” of 1873. This bonanza introduced out at the least $300 million in mineral deposits. At the moment you possibly can tour round and expertise what it was like for the 25,000 residents to stroll the city again within the day.
Mark Twain labored right here! In 1868, Mark Twain reminisced and wrote about his journalism profession in Nevada with the Virginia Metropolis Territorial Enterprise:
“To discover a petrified man, or break a stranger’s leg, or cave an imaginary mine, or uncover some lifeless Indians in a Gold Hill tunnel, or bloodbath a household at Dutch Nick’s, had been feats and calamities that we by no means hesitated about devising when the general public wanted issues of thrilling curiosity for breakfast. The seemingly tranquil ENTERPRISE workplace was a ghastly manufacturing facility of slaughter, mutilation and common destruction in these days.”
—Mark Twain’s Letters from Washington, Quantity IX, Territorial Enterprise, March 7, 1868
Supposedly the spirits of the folks of the “Queen of the Comstock” nonetheless hang-out the locations the place they lived, labored, performed, discovered, and died. I personally skilled no ghosts whereas I used to be there.
Enjoyable truth: Silver from Virginia Metropolis might have helped save the Union. Virginia Metropolis helped finance the U.S. authorities through the Civil Battle.
Supposedly the spirits of the folks of the “Queen of the Comstock” nonetheless hang-out the locations the place they lived, labored, performed, discovered, and died. I personally skilled no ghosts whereas I used to be there.