Nevada’s ghost town that refuses to be a ghost: Virginia City is still very much alive

Virginia City’s silver legacy lives on

Twenty-four miles southeast of Reno, a town of 787 people sits on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson with a past that dwarfs its present.

Virginia City was born in 1859 when miners hit the Comstock Lode, the first major silver strike in U.S. history, and within 15 years, 25,000 people had poured in from across the world.

The mines pulled out hundreds of millions in gold and silver, worth billions today. What they left behind is one of the most intact pieces of the Old West still standing anywhere in America.

The fire that rebuilt a city in 18 months

In 1875, a fire tore through Virginia City and leveled most of it. The town rebuilt in a year and a half.

Those rebuilt Victorian-era structures still stand today on C Street, and a state commission controls every exterior change made to any building inside the district.

The town earned National Historic Landmark status in 1961 and ranks among the largest federally designated historic districts in the country. What you walk through now is not a replica.

It is the real thing.

Ride the most famous short-line railroad in America

The Virginia and Truckee Railroad started hauling gold and silver ore out of the mountains in 1869. At its peak, 45 trains a day moved through Virginia City.

The railroad shut down eventually, got rebuilt in the 1970s, and now runs narrated 35-minute rides from Virginia City to Gold Hill, passing 17 historic mine sites along the way.

A longer run connects Carson City to Virginia City on select days, with a 3.5-hour stop to walk around town. Rides run daily from Memorial Day through October.

Go 450 feet underground at Chollar Mine

The Chollar Mine was staked in 1859, the same year the Comstock Lode was discovered. Over roughly 80 years of operation, it pulled out about $17 million in gold and silver.

Today, guided tours take you 450 feet into the tunnels, past original mining equipment and examples of square set timbering, a structural technique invented right here on the Comstock by a German engineer named Philip Deidesheimer.

The darkness closes in quickly down there. Tours run daily from May through October, and they fill up.

The desk where Mark Twain got his name

Samuel Clemens arrived in Virginia City in 1862 to report for the Territorial Enterprise, the territory’s top newspaper. On Feb. 3, 1863, he signed a piece for the first time as Mark Twain.

The Territorial Enterprise dated to 1858 and made its name on colorful frontier journalism.

The original building on C Street now holds the Mark Twain Museum, where you can see his actual desk and antique printing presses.

Twain left in 1864, but the two years he spent here set the course for everything that came after.

Seventeen museums packed into one historic town

Virginia City runs about 17 museums, and each one covers different ground.

The Fourth Ward School, built in 1876, is the only four-story Victorian-era wood school building left standing in the United States.

The Way It Was Museum on C Street holds what is described as the most complete collection of Comstock mining artifacts anywhere in the world.

The Comstock Firemen’s Museum, inside an 1876 jail building, holds one of the country’s largest law enforcement and firefighting collections.

The Mackay Mansion, home to one of the wealthiest men of the era, opens its doors with original furnishings still inside.

C Street’s wooden boardwalks take you back 150 years

C Street is the spine of town, and the wooden plank sidewalks lining it have not changed much since the 1860s. The American Planning Association named it one of America’s Great Streets in 2013.

You will pass antique stores, candy shops, old-time photo studios, and gift shops that do not exist anywhere else. People in period clothing walk the boardwalks alongside you.

The buildings on either side date to the 1860s and 1870s, and standing in the middle of C Street on a quiet morning, the century gap narrows fast.

Piper’s Opera House still puts on a show

John Piper built the current opera house in 1885, after two earlier versions burned down on the same site. The building hosted some of the biggest names of its era, Mark Twain among them.

It has been restored and still runs live performances today.

Daily tours run from April through October, and it remains one of the most photographed buildings in town.

Walk inside and the stage, the balconies, the old wooden seats all tell you this place was built for serious entertainment at a time when this town had money to spend.

The church that rose from the ashes of 1875

St. Mary in the Mountains went up in 1868 and burned in the Great Fire of 1875.

The congregation rebuilt it by 1877, this time as a basilica, and the tall steeple has been visible from across the valley ever since. The church is still active, still holding services, and open to visitors.

Walking inside, the scale of it stops you. Whoever funded this construction in a mining town in the Nevada desert was not cutting corners.

That combination of ambition and faith says a lot about what Virginia City once was.

Three thousand wild horses run through the Virginia Range

The Virginia Range holds an estimated 3,000 wild horses, and Smithsonian Magazine has called it the top site in the West to see them.

Herds sometimes move right through town or run along the V&T Railroad tracks while the train is passing. Driving up State Route 341, you may spot them on the hillside before you even reach town.

These horses have a history tied to Velma Johnston, a Reno woman known as Wild Horse Annie, whose advocacy pushed Congress to pass federal protections for mustangs. The horses you see today carry that story with them.

A prank in 1959 turned into the world’s strangest race

The International Camel and Ostrich Races started as a hoax. The Territorial Enterprise ran a fake story in 1959 about camel racing in Virginia City.

The San Francisco Chronicle picked it up as fact, then sent real camels the following year to race. The event stuck.

Now in its 67th year in 2026, the three-day September race draws over 10,000 people and features camels, ostriches, zebras and emus racing with both professional and amateur jockeys.

It is one of the most genuinely strange things you can watch anywhere in the American West.

Silver Terrace Cemetery holds the whole Comstock story

The cemetery sits on the hillside just outside town, and the headstones read like a map of the world.

Birthplaces from Ireland, Germany, China, Mexico and beyond mark stones grouped by fraternal order, religion and occupation.

Masons, firefighters, Knights of Pythias, all buried in their own sections, surrounded by Victorian-style cast-iron fences. Ghost hunters come here for reported sightings of glowing headstones and floating lights.

Whether or not you believe that, standing among the graves of the people who built Virginia City at its peak is a different kind of weight altogether.

Visit Virginia City, Nevada

Virginia City sits about 24 miles southeast of Reno, roughly a 40-minute drive up the Geiger Grade, or about 25 to 30 minutes from Carson City.

The visitor center at 86 South C Street is open daily and a good first stop to get your bearings. The V&T Railroad runs daily from Memorial Day through October, with themed holiday trains in season.

Chollar Mine tours run daily from May through October. Plan for a full day.

There is more here than most people expect, and it earns the time.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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