History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

Claims were taken up and staked off for a great distance north and south of the Ophir mine in the direction the lead was shown to run by the huge croppings of quartz that came to the surface, and towered far above the surface, in various places.

It was not long before other companies had found pay, and soon there was in the place quite a lively little camp, the miners living in brush shanties, houses made of canvas, or camping in the open air in the sage-brush flats.

At this time the camp was spoken of, in documents placed upon the records, as “Pleasant Hill” and as “Mount Pleasant Point;” in August, 1859, it was designated as “Ophir” and “the settlement known as Ophir,” and in September, as “Ophir Diggings.” In October the place is first mentioned as “Virginia Town,” but a month later it was proposed to “change the name of the place from Virginia Town to Wun-u-muc-a, in honor of the chief of the Py-utes.” Old Winnemucca, chief of all the Piutes was not so honored, and in November, 1859, the town was first called Virginia City, a name it has ever since retained.

Comstock says the way the place came to take the name of Virginia City was this:

“‘Old Virginia‘ was out one night with a lot of the “boys” on a drunk, when he fell down and broke his whisky bottle. On rising he said—‘I baptize this ground Virginia.’[Virginia.’]”

For a time the old settlers had the new diggings all to themselves and were hard at work with their rockers, saving only the gold and paying no further attention to the silver than to curse it for interfering with their operations; but in a few weeks after the discovery had been made, there was suddenly stirred up in California a whirlwind of excitement that swept over the Sierras, and not only overwhelmed these first miners on the Comstock, but swept them almost out of sight.

About the 1st of July, 1859, Augustus Harrison, a ranchman living on the Truckee[Truckee] Meadows, visited the new diggings about which so much was then said in the several settlements. He took a piece of the ore and going to California shortly afterwards carried it to Grass Valley, Nevada county. He gave the specimen, as a curiosity, to Judge James Walsh, a resident of Grass Valley, who took it to the office of Melville Atwood, an assayer in the town. The ore was assayed and yielded at the rate of several thousand dollars per ton, in gold and silver.

All were astonished and not a little excited when it was ascertained that the black-looking rock which the miners over in Washoe—as the region about the Comstock lode was called—considered worthless, and were throwing away, was almost a solid mass of silver. The excitement by no means abated when they were informed by Mr. Harrison that there were tons and tons of the same stuff in sight in the opening that the Ophir Company had already made in the lead. It was agreed among the few who knew the result of the assay, that the matter should, for the time being, be kept a profound secret; meantime they would arrange to cross the Sierras and secure as much ground as possible on the line of the newly-discovered silver lode.

But each man had intimate friends in whom he had the utmost confidence in every respect, and these bosom friends soon knew that a silver-mine of wonderful richness had been discovered over in the Washoe country. These again had their friends, and, although the result of the assay made by Mr. Atwood was not ascertained until late at night, by 9 o’clock the next morning half the town of Grass Valley knew the wonderful news.

Judge Walsh and Joe Woodworth packed a mule with provisions, and mounting horses, were off for the eastern slope of the Sierras at a very early hour in the morning. This was soon known, and the news of the discovery and their departure ran like wildfire through Nevada county. In a few days hundreds of miners had left their diggings in California and were flocking over the mountains on horseback, on foot, with teams, and in any way that offered. Many men packed donkeys with tools and provisions, and, going on foot themselves, trudged over the Sierras at the best speed they were able to make.