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11 Chapter One: History

The Comstock Lode In 1859, Henry T. P. Comstock discovered one of the largest silver finds in North America, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Nevada. Known as the Comstock Lode, the area yielded about $300 million worth of silver. Towns and cities, including Virginia City, grew up around the lode. Eventually, people mined all the silver, and many of those communities, Virginia City included, dissolved into ghost towns.

A diagram of mines beneath the Comstock lode.

News of the find at Sutter’s Mill spread quickly. Thousands soon trekked to California on foot, by ship, in wagons, and even on donkeys. All came to strike it rich. Some succeeded, but many others left California poorer than when they arrived. A few ended up dead or swindled out of their treasure. By the end of 1849, the nonnative population of California had ballooned from 1,000 to more than 100,000. By the end of 1852, prospectors would mine some $2 billion worth of gold from the region.