The historic gold and silver mining town of Virginia City, NV is built on four levels on the side of a mountain. To start our tour of the town, Brock drove Leola, Duane and me around the top streets where the successful people built their mansions. (Now this area has mostly middle-class modern houses.)
The middle street was the business section, closely packed with stores and saloons, and restaurants--most sharing walls with no space between them--lining both sides of the street and connected by board sidewalks. (Now they are stores, saloons, restaurants, museums, and tours.)
Here we parked the truck and explored on foot, randomly exploring whatever interested us.
Some we learned about the history of the building and passed by,
some we went inside to explore.
One of these places was the Comstock Firemen's Museum,
where we learned about the Great Fire that reduced most of the city to ashes.
and admired several old pumper engines on display.
Another was this saloon
Inside, the saloon definitely didn't live up to it's reputation for drunken brawling, with its motely collection of chandeliers,
and hand-painted panels along the bottom of the bar.
Since the Great Fire, these buildings have all been rebuilt, and some expanded and modernized.
We ate lunch in this saloon.
The lower part of town we chose to tour via trolly.
The working class lived here with small houses and a few churches. One section at the edge of town was the "red light" district with its tiny little rooms or "cribs".
This church was destroyed in the Great Fire. It was rebuilt without nails--everything is pegged together.
The people who built these houses were feuding. One owner built his house as close as possible to the other to deprive him of the cool breezes of summer and the warmer breezes of winter.
The areas surrounding the town were occupied by cemeteries
and 200+ mines including this one, the deepest mine in the US, as attested to by the huge piles of tailings.
Next, we explore by rail.
Louise and Duane
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