Little Big Town
I thought it might be interesting to look into the history of some of the towns - some of which may have grown into cities - that sprang up during the push westward in the 1800s, and to see how they were founded, how they developed over time and what they’re like now. There are of course plenty of famous (or infamous) ones such as Dodge City in Kansas or Tombstone in Arizona, to say nothing of Cody, Wyoming and Deadwood, South Dakota, but I wanted to start this series off by going for something less obvious, and so this is where we begin.
Virginia City, Nevada
Located in the Nevada Desert, this ain’t no Las Vegas, with one of the smallest populations I’ve heard of - a mere 855 residents in 2010 - though at its height it boasted around 25,000 people. One of the original boom towns, Virginia City was founded on the basis of the discovery of silver, in what was called the Comstock Lode, after the man who made the discovery, although other accounts claim he merely bullied the discoverers into appending his name. The general agreement seems to be that the town was named for James Finnimore, nicknamed “Old Virginny Finney”, said to be one of the most accomplished gold miners in the area. In 1859 a huge silver deposit, the first in the USA, was discovered just under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, and the town quickly sprung up in its wake.
At the time, silver was attributed the same value as gold, and all product from the Comstock Lode mines was purchased by the US Government to mint coins. The income from the mines helped the war effort when the Civil War broke out, and also helped the town and the surrounding area grow, making Nevada a popular destination for fortune-hunters, and also allowing it to reach the population level required to attain statehood. In just one year the population more than tripled, and businesses flocked there to set up. The boom in Virginia was good news for nearby San Francisco too: having profited from the famous Gold Rush of 1849 this small town had grown into a major city, and now the wealth of the Comstock mines helped finance development and growth in what would become one of the most important cities on the west coast.
Immigrants, too, poured into Virginia, mostly miners from England and Ireland, and the population at its height was around 25,000, but the Great Fire of 1875 did over twelve million dollars’ damage and left two thousand homeowners without a roof over their heads, precipitating the departure of many, followed by more when the seams began to run out and the mines dried up. Today, Virginia survives on its history, with museums, arts centres and places of interest all harking back to the boom town days when it was the silver capital of America. It has been immortalised in book, film and on TV, with the popular western show
Bonanza set very close by.