Forgotten Giants: the Largest Cities in Nevada 150 Year's Ago That Vanished from the Map
In 1875, Virginia City was the richest patch of ground on Earth. Driven by the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, the settlement evolved from a collection of canvas tents into a three-mile grid of brick mansions, four-story luxury hotels, and gas-lit avenues. Heavy machinery operated day and night, pumping scalding water from vertical shafts thousands of feet underground.
Census numbers from the era frequently failed to capture the true size of these settlements. While the 1870 federal census credited Virginia City with roughly 7,000 residents, historians and local records indicate the municipal core and its floating workforce reached between 15,000 and 20,000 people at its peak around 1875. The city boasted six banks, an opera house, private piping networks bringing Sierra Nevada snowmelt across valleys, and the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, where Mark Twain honed his craft. It operated with the infrastructure and cosmopolitan energy of San Francisco, far surpassing anything found elsewhere in the Intermountain West.
