Carson City to Virginia City

Today we took a driving tour that took us first to Nevada's capital, Carson City. Once we got out of Reno, this was our view. We took 395 to the capitol. Carson City is a typical narrow valley town, narrow and long. The main part of town is picturesque, consisting mainly of original historic buildings and some restored buildings. Carson City was established for a year before the Comstock Lode was discovered. The Lode was responsible for transforming this little town into a bustling supply and shipping center for the mine.

This is the capitol building. We walked down the main street taking pix on our way to lunch at a local diner called Mom and Pop's. The food was ok and priced about the same as the Nugget Casino lunch counter, but much quieter and not smoky. Apparently it is the favorite lunch hangout for the government workers, since they only have to walk across the street.



This building is actually two historic hotels. It is across the street from the Capitol Building and across the parking access from our diner.

Before we took our walk, though, we started here. This is the original Carson City Mint, which is next to and connected to

the Nevada State Historical Museum. This is a large complex which includes the upper two floors of the original mint with displays about the mint. The basement, which originally held the minting machine, is now a hard rock mine tunnel, and the street of a gold mining ghost town. The new building houses displays of native Great Basin inhabitants, including video memories of some of the older native residents. There were many other exhibits including a historic guns, gems and minerals, vintage machines, clothing, and everyday artifacts, etc which reflect the area history and most of which were donated by locals.

For our friends Froggi Donna and Stu

Gatling gun

This exhibit of the earliest geologic history included nearly complete and beautifully preserved skeletons of a mastodon and a horse. They are from different geologic periods, but reflect the changing weather conditions as cool, wet weather regularly alternated with warm, dry conditions throughout the ages.

Mummified cat found at an abandoned miner's camp

Silver dollar minted at Carson City Mint. The mint was the brainchild of the local populace who decided that they needed one to mint all the silver coming from the local mines. It took over ten years and many trips to Washington for approval and money before the building was completed and put into operation. It was unique because the silver was assayed, smelted, cast into blanks, and stamped into coins all in the same building. Over the years it was in operation, it minted over 44 million dollars in silver and gold coins.

One room of the museum was dedicated to the first gambling machines.

Coin stamper

After our tour of Carson City we had enough time left to make the drive up the mountain to historic Virginia City. This is the town that the Comstock (silver) Lode built. When the town burned, the Lode rebuilt the town. It also built a lot of San Francisco. When the town burned, a lot of the wealthiest people relocated there.

We left Carson City, drove through the town of Silver City, and out the other side. We started up the mountain through Devil's Gap. This is the entrance to the canyon where the Comstock Lode was discovered, although it took miners 10 years of mining this canyon before the Lode was actually discovered.

The town (6000 ft up) is all rebuild because the inevitable fire destroyed the town. The town was quickly rebuild because it was October and no one had any shelter. Many of the buildings were never rebuild, though, so it doesn't stretch to the mountain as it did before. The town boasted a population of about 30000 to today's total of 400.

Click on this pic to read the signs in the upper windows.

It is a typical tourist town with the usual trips, museums, shops, saloons and eateries--much the same as when it was first started! The town is like Jerome, AZ in that it is built right on the hill, with the main street and parallel streets level and connecting streets going up and down hill. There is plenty of free parking, including one boon docking lot for rvers, although only small rigs are recommended to tackle the steep grade to get there. The town is fun to visit. To see it all, though, we recommend two days. We also recommend visiting during the summer season, which starts on Memorial Day. Today there were some museums and tours open, as well as most of the shops, but some venues we would have liked to see were closed.

There was a nice tram tour, but today several schools were visiting, so it was full. We had a nice walking tour. We visited the visitors' center for information. We discovered that if you buy tour and museum tickets there, you get a nice discount.

After our tour, we tramped back to our truck for the ride home. The trip down the mountain was just as breathtaking as the trip up. The road is really snaky and the views unfold until you see Reno spread out below.

Back in Reno we caught up to the present time and made our trip to Bordertown without incident. Time to rest up. Tomorrow we tour Reno.

More later,

Louise and Duane