After a decade, the California Gold Rush was on the wane. Miners began looking elsewhere for the next big strike.

In 1859, a small group of gold seekers found some promising ground high in the mountains east of Washoe Valley, Nevada. Placer (surface) miners, they cursed the heavy blueblack sand that clogged their rockers.

One miner finally took a sample of the blue-black nuisance to an assayer in Grass Valley, CA. The assayer repeated his tests several times because he could not believe his results. The sample translated into $3,000 in silver and $876 in gold per ton! Suddenly, the richest strike in mining history, the legendary Comstock Lode, was attracting miners, gamblers, hustlers, and whores to the mountain top. A few tents soon became a teeming mining camp as 10,000 fortune hunters swarmed the hills.

"Virginia City" got its name from one of the original discoverers, a degenerate drunk who christened the camp with a bottle of booze, naming it after his home state. He sold his claim for a bottle of whiskey and a blind horse.

By 1863, the Comstock had produced more than $12 million in ore. President Abraham Lincoln, anxious for congressional votes from another free state to secure his re-election, and with his eye on the riches pouring out of Virginia City, he rammed through statehood for Nevada. The "Silver State" made a critical contribution to financing the Civil War.

An early observer said the town consisted of framed shanties, tents of canvas and holes dug in the mountain side. "The principal business houses were saloons, gambling houses, and dance halls...."

Another visitor to early Virginia City described a typical gambling hall where "Little stacks of gold and silver fringed the Monte tables and glittered beneath the swinging lamps.... The rattle of dice, coin, ball, and spinning-markers, flapping of greasy cards and chorus of calls... went on all day and night, while clouds of tobacco smoke filled the air" and added to the "stench rising from the stained and greasy floors, soiled clothes, and hot flesh of the unwashed company."

Young Samuel Clemens arrived in Virginia City in 1862 hoping to strike it rich as a prospector. Unsuccessful, he took a job with the Territorial Enterprise Newspaper to make ends meet, adopting his pen name, "Mark Twain".

Twain wrote of Virginia City, "The flush times were in magnificent flower! The city of Virginia claimed a population of 18,000, and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees, and the other half swarmed the... tunnels of the Comstock, hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same streets."

Drinking and gambling were principal leisure activities of the miners, almost all of whom were single men. In addition to Faro, Monte, Keno, Twenty-One, Poker, and Billiards, men bet on "prizefights, wrestling matches, shooting contests, dogs fights, and horse races."

Mark Twain observed that "the cheapest and easiest way to become to become an influential man" in Virginia City was to become a bartender. "The saloon-keeper had a shade higher rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight," Twain explained.

A railroad linking Virginia City to Carson City in the valley below and then to the transcontinental railway was completed in 1869. The railroad cars came down the mountain filled with silver and returned with supplies and adventurers.

At its peak in 1876, Virginia City was the second largest city in the West with a population of 30,000. A visitor writing home in 1877 complained that "Every other house was a drinking or gambling saloon, and we passed a great many brilliantly lighted windows, where sat audacious looking women who... entertained guests within."

Madame Julia Bulette was the "Queen of the Comstock". "Julia's Palace", a neat row of white clapboard cottages each lit by a red light at night, made her a very wealthy citizen. Robbed and murdered, she was given the biggest and finest funeral ever seen in the territory.

When the suspect was apprehended his lynching was cause for celebration. Even the saloons closed so everyone could attend.

As Virginia City grew, luxurious gambling and 'entertainment' houses catering to the affluent attracted the action. The Washoe Club, the "ultimate citadel of... luxuries", was among the finest gambling establishments in the West. The Kings of the Comstock dined and played high-stakes Poker in games that lasted for days and where "gold double- eagles passed across the table in foot-high stacks."

Hamilton Baker, famous frontier Faro dealer, conducted business in one of Virginia City's foremost gambling establishments. He accepted any amount a player cared to stake. Records show the highest bet wagered on the turn of a single card was $30,000. Baker later moved to Saratoga Springs, NY, where he was paid $4,500 a month to run Faro. By the 1890s much of the silver and gold had played out. The miners and fortune-seekers disappeared to other strikes in the Dakotas and Klondike.

Over $400 million was taken from the more than 400 miles of tunnels and shafts excavated under Virginia City.

Today, a few thousand people still live in the Comstock. Much of early Virginia City remains and is a designated National Historic District.