Author: Ronald M. James
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 0874174171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 617
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Book Description
Nevada’s Comstock Mining District has been the focus of legend since it first burst into international prominence in the late 1850s, and its principal settlement, Virginia City, endures in the popular mind as the West’s quintessential mining camp. But the authentic history of the Comstock is far more complex and interesting than its colorful image. Contrary to legend, Virginia City spent only its first few years as a ramshackle mining camp. The mining boom quickly turned it into a thriving urban center, at its peak one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi, replete with most of the amenities of any large city of its time. The lure of the area’s fabulous wealth attracted a remarkably heterogenous population from around the world and offered employment to dozens of trades and thousands of people, both men and women, representing every one of the region’s diverse ethnic groups. Ronald James’s brilliant account of the Comstock’s long and eventful history—the first comprehensive study of the subject in over a century—examines every aspect of the region and employs information gleaned from hundreds of written sources, interviews, archeological research, computer analysis, folklore, gender studies, physical geography, and architectural and art history, as well as over fifty rare photographs, many of them previously unpublished.
Author: Mark Twain
Publisher: Nevada Publications
ISBN: 9780913814789
Category : Virginia City (Nev.)
Languages : en
Pages : 191
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Book Description
Consists of chapters excerpted from Mark Twain's famous classic book 'Roughing it' with contemporary illustrations.
Author: Ronald M. James
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803240082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
Spent cartridges. The pieces of an original Tabasco Pepper Sauce bottle. Shards of a ceramic pot, stained red. For archaeologists each of the thousands of artifacts uncovered at a site tells a story. For noted Comstock authority Ronald M. James, it is a story resulting from decades of research and excavation at one of the largest National Historic Landmarks in America, the Nevada town that, with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, became a boomtown microcosm of the American West. Drawing on the work of hundreds of volunteers, students, and professional archaeologists, Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past shows how every detail—from unearthed artifacts to reports of local saloons to plans for the cemetery to surviving nineteenth-century buildings—adds to our view of Virginia City when it was one of the richest places on earth. James recreates this unlikely epitome of frontier industry and cosmopolitan living, the thriving hub of corporate executives, middle-class families, miners, prostitutes, and barkeepers—and more foreign-born residents per capita than anywhere else in the country—in a spot that had begun its life a few years earlier as the mining camp of several lucky guys. An excavation of the history of Virginia City, a window on the heyday of the American frontier, James’s book is also an enlightening look at how archaeology brings the story of the past to life.
Author: James Knox Polk Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
Author: Janice Oberding
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1626199477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1
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Book Description
Unlike any city in America, Virginia City epitomizes the notion of a western boom-and-bust ghost town. The Comstock Silver Rush lured wealth seekers from around the world, including a young Samuel Clemens. Despite the fortune some found, not all of the town's earliest settlers rest easy. Shops, hotels, boardwalks and cemeteries are said to be filled with the supernatural remnants of Virginia City's hardscrabble characters and their violent propensities. The queen of haunted Nevada, Janice Oberding, mines Virginia City's spectral history, from the ghost of Henry Comstock to the ghostly Rosie and William of the Gold Hill Hotel.
Author: Ronald M. James
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738569703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
In Virginia City and its Comstock Lode, miners worked one of the richest deposits of gold and silver ever found. Many places claim that title, but the precious metals retrieved between 1859 and 1880, with an equivalent value today in the billions of dollars, played an unprecedented role in industrial history. With cutting-edge technology, Comstock engineers shaped mining throughout the world for the next 50 years. Virginia City's wealth propelled several people to Congress and others into the nation's highest society. At the same time, those who settled in the mining district built a civilized, sophisticated place. Drawing on former glories, the popular television series Bonanza perpetuated the legend, capturing international audiences with 14 seasons of programs. As one of the nation's largest historic landmarks, the Comstock continues to welcome millions of visitors.
Author: Kelly J. Dixon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
"Boomtown Saloons also offers an equally vivid portrait of the modern historical archaeologist who combines time-honored digging, reconstruction, and analysis methods with such cutting-edge technology as DNA analysis of saliva traces on a 150-year-old pipestem and chemical analysis of the residue in discarded condiment bottles. Dixon's sparkling text and thoughtful interpretation of both physical and documentary evidence reveal a hitherto unknown aspect of material life and culture in one of the West's most storied boomtowns and demonstrate the vital, complex social role that the traditional western saloon served in its community."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: John David Ellingsen
Publisher: Sweetgrass Books
ISBN: 9781591520900
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Witness to History, by Virginia City Curator Emeritus John D. Ellingsen, is a delightful and often moving book, unusual among writings on the Gold Rush era of Montana and the West. It is part history, part memoir, and part passionate essay about the importance of historic preservation. The book details the origins of Virginia City and Nevada City their rough beginnings and their glory days. It also offers a unique perspective on the restoration and saving of Virginia and Nevada Cities by a man who has dedicated his entire life to that cause. More than two dozen historical photographs help to tell one of the most significant stories of historic preservation in the western United States.
Author: Robert P. Maccubbin
Publisher: City of Williamsburg, Va
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
Commissioned by the city of Williamsburg, Virginia for the occasion of its 300th anniversary celebration, this collection of 23 articles draws a picture of the history of Williamsburg from prehistoric times to the present. Although a couple of articles touch upon the lives of Native Americans, African slaves, and others, the majority of the material is the predictable celebration of Williamsburg's prominent citizens; architecture; and governmental, religious, and academic institutions. A significant number of black and white pictures are included throughout. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Stephen H. Provost
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781949971033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Martinsville Memories by Stephen H. Provost examines the history of Martinsville, a town in southern Virginia. A town of fewer than 15,000 people, it's been the plug tobacco capital of the world and the sweatshirt capital of the world. It hosts two stock-car races each year at a speedway that holds four times that many people - the oldest on the NASCAR circuit. It's a place of verdant beauty and blue skies a few miles north of the North Carolina state line, in the Goldilocks zone: seldom too hot in summer or two cold in winter. It has thrived as the town with the nation's most millionaires per capita and struggled through factory closures during the era of globalization.Packed with more than 200 images, Martinsville Memories looks at the town from its beginnings through its is a textual and photographic look a diverse town built on tobacco, textiles and furniture that occupies a unique place in the nation's fabric and history. From its the town's historic beginnings through its 20th century prosperity, this volume offers a nostalgic trek through time, with stops at drive-ins, old hotels and iconic storefronts along the way. Martinsville Memories doesn't stop at the city limits, but gives the reader a tour of surrounding communities such Collinsville, Ridgeway, Bassett, Spencer and Axton, as well.With a foreword by author and Martinsville native Stephen Mark Rainey, Martinsville Memories captures the triumphs and struggles of a city at the heart of the South and the soul of America.
