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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thormagni" data-source="post: 1580673" data-attributes="member: 13637">A little historyVirginia City Deadlands D20Virginia City of 1877 is a booming city. Since the earthquake that sent the California coast plunging into the Pacific Ocean and the discovery of a massive vein of ghost rock in 1875, it has become the largest community of the West, boasting between 30,000 and 40,000 temporary residents, most hoping to strike it rich by finding an undiscovered vein of silver, gold or ghost rock in the barren mountains.The area first made its way into the history books in 1859, when gold was found at the base of Six-Mile Canyon two miners, Pat McLaughlin and Peter O'Reilly. The gold was enough to draw the first wave of prospectors, who cursed the blue-grey mud that seemed to cling to boots, tools and equipment, fouling everything. On a whim, a miner sent a sample of the mud to be assayed. It proved to be pure silver ore worth more than $2,000 a ton. Miner Henry Comstock tricked the two into turning over their claim, convincing them that their discovery was actually on his property and the mother lode became known as the Comstock Lode.Prospectors flooded the mountains outside of Carson City, fueling a second gold and silver rush. A miner, James Finney, nicknamed "Old Virginny" from his birthplace, named the boom town during a drunken celebration. He dropped a bottle of whiskey on the ground and christened the newly-founded tent-and-dugout town on the slopes of Mt. Davidson "Old Virginny Town," in honor of himself. The pure money being pulled from the earth around the ramshackle "Virginny Town" caught the attention of the federal government. President Lincoln desperately needed another Union state and Nevada's financial rewards were a powerful incentive. In 1863 the former western edge of Utah territory became a state in its own right, despite the fact that it fell far short of the required population for statehood.The resulting boom turned Virginny Town into Virginia City, the most important settlement between Denver and San Francisco; and the grubby prospectors into instant millionaires who built mansions, imported furniture and fashions from Europe and the Orient, and financed the Civil War. The return on investments made in mining on the Comstock fueled the building of San Francisco. But as the Civil War dragged on and the production of gold and silver dropped off, the prominence of Virginia City seemed destined to fade. The final nail in the coffin was the great earthquake of '68 that plunged San Francisco, and the rest of the California coast, into the ocean. Without a ready stream of eager miners and with the rising number of Indian attacks, Virginia City's population dwindled.But the discovery of ghost rock in the Maze sparked a memory in down-and-out Virginia City miner Robert "Hoppy" Hopkins. Hoppy recalled a long-forgotten section of mine where he had discovered a strange mineral several years before that no one could identify. With the last of his money he bought the claim to the mine and started working. By 1877, Hopkins was a millionaire and Virginia City is booming again. It boasts one of the largest concentrations of ghost rock yet found and miners, tinkerers and mad scientists are trying to figure out how to get as much of the valuable ore out of the ground as quickly as possible.Today, Virginia City is a bustling boom town. Saloons line the street, with barkeeps eager to keep the miners watered and girls eager to keep them entertained. The names of some of these frontier establishments are legendary throughout the West with places like the Bucket of Blood, Delta Saloon and the Silver Queen have taken on a life of their own. Casinos and keno tables are plentiful, but so are other entertainments such as visiting celebrities, Shakespeare plays at Piper's new opera house and a row of opium dens. The town has five police precincts, a thriving red-light district, the first Miner's Union in the U.S. and two newspapers, one edited by an Easterner who calls himself Mark Twain. Twain, then known by his given name Samuel Clemens, first came to the territory with his brother nearly 15 years ago and hasn't found a reason to leave just yet.The potential for profit, adventure and excitement are ripe in Virginia City, but there are also rumors of something darker going on high in the Nevada mountains. Sometimes just plain weird things happen up in the valleys, mines and peaks around Virginia City. Most times they are written off as gases from the mines or the delusions of drunken miners, but still, some things can't be so easily dismissed. Like when bad apple Sam Brown keeps coming back to terrorize the town's good citizens, despite at least five people's claims to have put that bad man down for good over the years. (Adapted in part from <a href="http://www.vcnevada.com/history.htm" target="_blank">VC history</a> )</blockquote>

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