Carson City: The Mint of the Wild West
In 1859, stunning news came out of Virginia City, Nevada: a massive lode of silver ore had been discovered under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson. This new discovery, known as the Comstock Lode, promised incredible fortunes for miners and those involved in the silver industry. One major hurdle with the Comstock Lode, however, was that the nearest mint was located over 200 miles away in San Francisco. That meant in order to strike any of this silver into legal currency, thousands of tons of the precious metal would have to be transported on a perilous journey over the Sierra Nevada mountains.
