Virginia City is an abandoned gold and silver mining town that is now all tourism. My wife and I spent a day in Virginia City starting with a ride on the steam train. A word of warning: This is high desert and it’s hot in the summertime, and at an altitude of 6,000 feet, can be difficult to breathe, so prepare yourself.
Steam Train
We bought tickets online and were stressed about getting there on time. Don’t stress about it. They run the trains all day and they were not full (on a Saturday in July, mind you), so if we had missed our train, we could have taken the next one. They’re very laid-back about that. Also, there is a large parking lot (free) near the train station. It’s also within walking distance to downtown if you can’t find a spot on the road (the first picture below is from the lot).
The train goes out to an abandoned mine a few miles from the starting point. It backs up until it reaches that point, then they go back the way they come. The conductor gives the history of various mines as well as the town and the train as you ride. As you can see from the last photo, we had the open car to ourselves. It was hot that day, but we wanted to get good photos, so we sat out in the sun. Everyone else crowded into the covered car behind. You’re allowed to stand to take a quick photo, but not to move around. So, once you pick the car you’re riding in, you’re stuck (keep that in mind). The open car was nice, other than the heat. It gave an unobstructed view of everything.
Chollar Mine
After the train, we drove up to the parking area for the Chollar Mine tours. It wasn’t much of a drive, we could have walked it, but we were discovering this as we went.
The Chollar Mine is very tight. You have to duck low to walk through to where the tour guide talks about the history of the mine. We arrived a bit late so we walked in to join a group in progress. They had volunteer kids using a sledgehammer on a manual drill to demonstrate the amount of work it took to drill through rocks. Later in the mine’s history, they adopted pneumatic drills (pictured above). The tour guide talked about the hazards of operating that machine.
The Schoolhouse
This building turned out to be much more interesting than I had thought. It’s a self-guided tour, but there’s a lot to see and a lot of history.
The last few photos, with the peephole, are from a giant diorama that was really cool. The camera caught a bit of it, but it just couldn’t catch how incredible the tiny scenes looked when you get your eye up close to the magnifier.
Ponderosa Saloon
What drew us into this saloon, was hunger and the bank vault. They had good food and drinks, and a mine tour of their own (which is worth it).
