Gas Lamps In Virginia City


	Gas Lamps in Virginia City by Andria S. Daley-Taylor
	The greatest bonanza in precious metals was discovered on the Comstock Lode in 1859. The fabled Lode embraces three communities-Virginia City, Gold Hill, and Silver City. The Comstock Mining District grew rapidly and by 1860-1861, the town hosted many elegant brick and stone "fireproof" buildings, many still evidenced south of Taylor Street. By 1863, Virginia City had become a center of mining and commerce, and the first real industrial city in the West. It hosted an opera house, several theatres, music halls, banks, and five newspapers including the Territorial Enterprise, whose cub reporter was a red-haired fellow called Sam Clemens who hailed from Hannibal, Missouri, and who took the pen name of Mark Twain while writing for the Enterprise. Virginia City had the first stock exchange west of Chicago, the Washoe Stock Exchange, and by 1869, the fabled Virginia and Truckee Railroad. It was in 1863, after receiving complaints about the darkness of the streets, the town fathers, ordered gaslights. But the Civil War came home to distant Nevada territory in an odd way - the Commonwealth, the ship sailing for California with the necessary equipment to create the gas plant for Virginia City's new gaslights, fell prey to a Confederate raider, the Alabama. Dan DeQuille wrote about the incident. "Some of our people have thought pretty well of Jeff Davis... but not a single one of us thought of his wanting our gas-ing machine. We are all down on him! Every time we break our shins in traveling our dark streets, we curse Jeff Davis." Soon, new gas making equipment arrived, and as befitting the most metropolitan community between St. Louis and San Francisco, Virginia City was illuminated. The gas company had two water tanks above town, and generated gas from coke, which was piped through an ingenious system to 37 street lamps scattered about the mountainside town. Of course, the prominent citizens, the nabobs, put political pressure on the town fathers to have street lamps placed near their homes on "Millionaire's Row" located on B Street, and soon lights dotted the upper terraces of A Street, Howard and Stewart Streets. The impressive mine offices located on D Street with elaborate superintendent quarters, mansions really, were also brightly illuminated. Gas illumination became a matter for genuine civic pride. The town's official lamplighter was Michael Welch, who received $50 a month for his work, a terrible task on cold wintery nights. The parsimonious gas company instructed Welsh not to bother on moonlit nights. But the small boys who lived by the Savage mine, a group of Dickenseque artful dodgers, loved to play tricks on Welch and would light the lamps on moon bright nights, letting these lamps burn all night long and into to the day, much to Mr. Welch's chagrin and the gas company's mortification. In 1875, an estimated 20,000 people were living in Virginia City and surrounding areas. On October 26, 1875, the greatest disaster to ever strike the Comstock happened, when fire broke out at Crazy Kate's lodging house on A Street. The Great Fire of 1875 destroyed three-fourths of the town, leaving 10,000 homeless. Like the mythical phoenix, the town quickly rebuilt, more lavishly than before, with impressive Italianate storefronts. The gaslamps appeared to be less uniform in style, many made by local foundries. The Gold Hill Foundry, The Virginia Foundry, The Virginia and Truckee shops, and the Fulton Foundry. Mr. Banner, who owned Banner Brother's Clothing Emporium on C Street, today, home to the Crystal Bar, enraged his fellow shopkeepers when he placed a pyramidal three-sided lamp in front of his business. The Virginia Evening Chronicle quipped that Banner's light was so bright that "it was causing the mosquitos on the Carson River to hunt for shade in the cottonwood forest." The Virginia City National Landmark District was established in 1969, among the first and largest in the nation. For thirteen-plus decades, the Comstock has been an integral part of the legend of the American West. First, as producer of wealth and lately as a romantic fragment of the national history of the land. It is a place irresistible to writers and artists and somehow through "a pattern of unrelated but felicitous circumstances has endured not as a restoration fakement or a recreation," wrote Lucius Beebe. It is today the grand dowager, and the last true silver queen of the West. The Comstock Fireman's Museum Gaslight Restoration Fund was established in 1996, to return the gaslight district to downtown "C" Street. Phase one begins with the placement of 65 gaslamps. Eventually it is hoped to gaslight the entire business district and remove the overhanging wires from our historic downtown. The preparatory aspects of phase one - such as trenching has already been funded through private contributions, the county and grantswriting. Money for individual gaslights, $1500 each, will be raised through private contributions (to date over $100,000 has been raised and 65 gaslamps have been installed!). Purchase of a gaslight also includes the installation and the addition of a memorial plaque. A gaslight manufacturing company, which has been in business since 1877, will be casting the fourteen-foot cast aluminum decorative posts, creating the dome, frosted glass chimney, and a high pressure sodium bulb.

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Gas Lamps in Virginia City