Virginia City's colorful past unearthed by archeologists during sewer-line installation

Virginia City’s popularity as a “must-see” destination has never waned, and with the local tourist agency's focus on bringing more events to the Comstock, visitor numbers are certainly expected to grow.

One thing the historic mining town wasn’t prepared for, however, was a strain on one very-important utility.

Virginia City needed an update to its sewer lines and waste water treatment facility to handle the strain of its ever-growing popularity, especially during high visitor season.

USDA Rural Development based in Carson City stepped in to help with the associated costs, with a caveat: a federal law states that if federal money is being used on projects such as updating utilities, an archeologist must be brought in to make sure that the least harm is done to important, historic areas.

This is how Broadbent & Associates’ Senior Archaeologist Margo Memmott became involved with the project.

“The federal laws are designed to protect the environment and cultural resources,” said Memmott. “I help different companies and public entities like Storey County or the City of Reno to navigate those cultural resource laws so they can protect the history and the prehistory of their community.”

One of the ways Memmott assisted in the project was essentially finding out where NOT to dig, to preserve important historic artifacts or buildings, all the while saving tax payer money. Using historic maps, aerial drones, satellite images, and more, Memmott was able to construct a “heat map” of locations, and assist construction on navigating the past, in an effort to leave it untouched and buried.

However, the science isn’t always perfect. “You can’t predict what’s under the street exactly; you’d need a crystal ball” said Memmott. “But with the images and the historic maps, we were able to make educated guesses. We helped them save money by telling them what areas to stay away from.”

While they were able to navigate the majority of historic sites, they need up encountering important artifacts or sites a total of six times during the installation of sewer lines, leading to a range of outcomes.

The most substantial find was the brick and stone foundations from the Savage Mine, one of the first mines of the Comstock.

“The Savage Mine was established really early on in the Comstock, around 1860,” said Memmott. “It was one of the biggest producers in the 1860s on the Comstock. They had an over 2000-foot deep shaft.”

Memmott and her team found the foundations that supported the hoisting mechanisms, powered by steam engines, which were massive in their day, standing several stories high.

“They had to have big boilers that looked like giant water heaters on their side,” she said. “They had what were called ‘brick settings,’ another word for foundations, that supported a total of six boilers which operated the ‘man cages’ or elevators.”

There were four parts of the Savage Mine shaft, three for moving ore out moving workers in within their “man cages.” Within the fourth part of the shaft, they had to pump boiling hot water out of the mine so that it didn’t flood where they were working. With a shaft 2000-feet deep, they were often encountering pockets of water within the earth which, thanks to Nevada’s active geothermal conditions, was extremely hot and posed a great threat to workers.

The majority of Virginia City mine shafts have been secured by the Nevada Division of Minerals, including the Savage Shaft which was secured in the 1960s. However, much of the archaeological evidence is still there, waiting just under the pavement.

“These were massive factories,” said Memmott. “You have to throw aside the image of the old man with missing teeth with his donkey and pickaxe. This was the height of high tech underground mining during its day.”

In addition to the Savage Mine, they also came across a foundation of a little commercial property that would have fronted C Street, and some of the archaeological deposits recovered told a story of Virginia City’s history and its many, many fires.

Until about 1930, said Memmott, Virginia City’s streets were dirt. When they were paved, it essentially sealed everything beneath it like a tomb. Stratigraphy is an archaeological and geological term which is essentially the layers of earth found during a dig, each representing a different period of time.

Within these stratigraphic layers, Memmott and her team found evidence of over half a dozen fires that tore through Chinatown, and the property of what was lost within the fires, including several artifacts, and broken and burned debris.

They also found a cistern beneath the pavement during the sewer line installations, which is a large, cylindrical water-storage device that, during the times of the Comstock, would have been covered by heavy wooden boards and uncovered during fires as a means of fire-suppression, accessible throughout the city by firefighters.

“The whole reason there’s a federal law in place that states archaeology needs to be done when federal money is used is so the public can be involved, and that they can be connected with the history of our past,” said Memmott.

Now that the digs have been completed, the artifacts found will be turned over to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, and the Courthouse Slammer and County Museum in Virginia City.

What comes next is an act of love for Memmott, where she works pro-bono in an effort to make sure the public and the museums have all the information they need to understand these finds, what they were used for, and what it means when put into the context of documented history.

“I’ll assist Storey County where I can because I really do care about this,” said Memmott. “Not just with turning over the artifacts, but I’ll assist them with drawings, photographs, and notes so we can get these findings out to the community. It’s so important for the public to be able to form a connection to our collective past, in a more hands-on way than just reading an article online or even by watching the history channel. You don’t have to go to an exotic place to find interesting history; we have it right in our backyards.”

For Memmott, being able to bring archaeological findings to the public is a passion as well as a profession. She is on the board of the Fourth Ward School and Museum in Virginia City, and actively works towards Virginia City’s preservation.

“Reading a series of dates in a book is boring,” she said with a laugh. “Instead, I get to see what the workers did and what the laboring class’s lives were like. We get to answer the question of, ‘what was it like to be Chinese in the Comstock in 1872?’ These things don’t always get written about in your standard textbooks.”

To learn more about Virginia City’s history, you can visit the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, or any of the many museums in Virginia City.