C Street - Virginia City, Nevada - Where the Old West and Gold Mining in the Comstock Lode Come to Life

At the heart of historic Virginia City, NV - one of the greatest boom towns the world has ever known - lies its main drag, C Street, which itself qualifies as one of the world's most storied thoroughfares. By 1890, when the Comstock Lode had begun to play out, the miners of Virginia City had excavated $400 million worth of gold and silver - or more than $9 billion in present dollars, in a town of 30,000 people.

And when the miners brought their silver and their gold dust out they brought it to C Street. On C Street fortunes were won and lost in an afternoon. On C Street men drank hard and gambled hard in any one of the 110 saloons that stretched to the horizon, and then they walked outside and shot each other.

And the history of the place doesn't end with saloons. On C Street the citizens of Virginia City erected a grand opera house. On C Street, too, one of America's greatest writers, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, acquired his pen name.

For a traveler interested in the Old West, it's hard to imagine a place more rich with history. Indeed, Virginia City itself - the whole town - has been established as the largest historic district in the country. And it all starts with C Street. You can drink a beer at the Delta Saloon just the way you would have drunk it when the Delta opened its doors in 1863. Across the street at the Bucket of Blood, after a shot of whiskey, you can go outside to watch a shootout.

There are a lot of junk-filled tourist shops on C Street that didn't exist in Virginia City's heyday, including jewelry and t-shirt shops, rock and mineral shops, and stores that sell replicas of the hat Hoss Cartwright wore on Bonanza. You can eat as much fudge and ice cream as you want and dine at places like the Bonanza Caf, and the Caf, del Rio, the Palace Restaurant, and the Mandarin Garden.

But there's a lot on C Street that's real. For one thing, you can stay at the historic Silver Queen Hotel and drink at its authentic 1870's saloon. For another, you can swing through the doors of the Ponderosa Saloon, pass its bar, and then, walking through a back room, enter the shaft of the Best & Belcher mine.

One of the most fascinating things you can do on C Street is visit Piper's Corner Bar, in Piper's Opera House, where Samuel Clemens drank while he worked as a reporter at the Territorial Enterprise - a periodical that some people have called the "most influential'' newspaper of the period outside The New York Times. Clemens used to call out to his friend John Piper, "Barkeep, Mark Twain!'' - the Mississippi River boatman's shout meaning "two fathoms deep'' to order another round for himself and a friend. Piper began to call him Mark Twain. After he used the name in his newspaper byline, it stuck.

For more information contact the Virginia City Convention and Tourism Authority, on the northwest corner of Cand Taylor Streets. Address:86 South C Street, Virginia City, NV 89440 Phone: 800-718-7587

Email: info@visitvirginiacitynv.com