History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

The Virginia City Fire Department contains four fine steam fire engines, one Babcock engine and two or three hand engines, hook and ladder apparatus, and all else required in battling with fires in a town of the size. There are also in various places hydrants, to which hose can be attached and powerful streams thrown, in case of a fire occurring in their neighborhood.

In the business part of the city are many large and substantial fire-proof brick and stone structures. There is a large frame theatre and several halls in which balls and lectures are given. The rooms of the Washoe Club are as fine as those of most similar clubs in large cities, and were fitted up at a cost of about $75,000. They contain a library, reading and billiard-rooms, dining-room, and all else required for the accommodation of members. Many fine oil paintings adorn the walls, and the furniture and all the appointments are costly and elegant.

Owing to the fact that the plateau on which the town is built slopes rapidly to the east, buildings that are but three stories high in front, are in places five or six stories in the rear. This configuration of the ground is of great advantage to those who wish to make a display in cellars and basements.

On account of the altitude, the atmosphere is very light and thin, but the climate is as healthful as that of any town on the Pacific Coast. When the town was first settled, for some reason never explained, a notion prevailed that it was a bad place for children—that children could not be reared there; but this was a great mistake. Finer or more robust children can be seen in no town or city in the Union than those of Virginia. They grow like mushrooms. This is probably because they have to contend with but a small amount of atmospheric pressure—there is nothing to prevent their shooting up and expanding in all directions.

COUNTRY AND CITY.

It is a well-known[well-known] scientific fact that animals, as sheep and deer, found on elevated mountain ranges, have larger lungs than the same species when inhabiting places at or near the level of the sea; therefore the children of Virginia City are likely to be large-lunged and broad-chested when they arrive at maturity. The air being thin and light, it is necessary for those breathing it to inhale it in greater volume than would be required in breathing the denser atmosphere of places at or near the level of the sea, and to do this, there must be a proper and proportionate expansion of the lungs. Children born in the country provide themselves with a proper supply of lungs without any looking after, but adults sometimes find the stretching of their lungs to the required standard, a somewhat unpleasant operation.

The town of Gold Hill is well supplied with churches and schools, societies of all kinds, fire apparatus, and all else that should be found in a place of its population and business. What has been said of Virginia City in regard to these matters, will apply equally well to Gold Hill. The town has one daily paper, the Evening News, contains the works of many of the leading mines of the Comstock, and is a lively, bustling business place—is full of the thunder of machinery and the shriek of steam-whistles. Although but a mile from the centre of Virginia, the temperature of Gold Hill is about five degrees higher, winter and summer, than in the first-named town.

The whole town is undermined, and may be said to stand on a foundation of timbers. The ground worked out underneath the town has, however, been so thoroughly filled in with timbers and waste rock that there is no danger of it caving, though it is immediately but slowly settling. To the eastward of the town, and behind a large hill on which a portion of the town stands, a crevice has opened which is nearly a mile in length, and in places over two feet in width. This shows that the whole place, hill and all, is gradually “subsiding.” Both Virginia and Gold Hill have frequently been swept over by great fires, involving a loss of property to the extent of many millions of dollars. The burnt districts, however, have always been speedily rebuilt. The houses destroyed have been replaced with better and more substantial structures[structures], and consequently the towns have improved in appearance by means of the fires they have passed through, though many persons have suffered great loss.

A striking feature of both towns, and one which at once rivets the attention of all strangers, is the immense piles of rock seen in the neighborhood of all the principal mines. In these great dump-piles are heaped the rock and earth extracted in sinking the shafts, running the drifts, and in making other underground excavations. Persons from the Atlantic States, who are in the habit of judging of the depth of a well or other excavation by the amount of rubbish seen on the surface, are greatly surprised at the size of the dumps, and their first question is: “Did all that dirt come out of one mine?” As soon as they see one of these mountains of waste rock, they begin a mental calculation as to the size of the hole left in the ground. It is no small pile of rubbish that comes out of a shaft six feet wide, twenty-two feet long, and from 1,500 to 2,500 feet deep—to say nothing of the débris from innumerable drifts, crosscuts and winzes.