It's been over one hundred and fifty years ago that the Virginia and Truckee Railroad was incorporated. Now, a lot of you are familiar with some major railroads like the Union and Central Pacific, and various lines that have run through your towns, in Nevada and elsewhere. The V and T meant a lot to Nevada’s history. And it reflected some important aspects of American history.
Our friends at Vegas PBS aired a documentary about the Gilded Age. To oversimplify a bit, that’s the period in late nineteenth century America that we recall for great wealth and poverty, industrialization, and immigration, among other things. At the time, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie practiced what was called vertical integration. That meant a company controlled its supply chain. Carnegie Steel had its own iron and coal, plus ships and railroads. That way, Carnegie maximized his profits.
Nevada had its version of this. In 1864, the Bank of California opened a branch in Virginia City. It became the financier of a lot of mining on the Comstock. Bank boss William Sharon set out to make money and gain control. Within a few years, Sharon or the bank owned several mines and mills, as well as lumber and water sources.
Sharon wasn’t the first or only one to think a railroad to the Comstock Lode would be a good idea. But he got it done. He saw the value of building a road from Virginia City to meet the transcontinental railroad in the Reno area. It would cut transportation costs. It also might make money for him and his friends in what was called the Bank Ring.
So they incorporated the railroad. The line would run from Gold Hill, right next to Virginia City, to the Truckee River. Now, if you know your Nevada geography, you know that would bypass Carson City, the Carson River, and the Washoe Valley. Sharon knew it, and so did area residents. They screamed. Sharon felt VERY generous. He said he would have the road built through there if Ormsby and Washoe Counties bought stock in the railroad company. They did.
As Sharon’s biographer Michael Mackley put it, “The proposed Gold Hill to Reno route was certainly a bluff used to raise county monies. From the beginning Sharon undoubtedly intended to run the line along the Carson River, since he was in the process of acquiring the bank’s seven foreclosed mills for the Bank Ring and consolidating them on the river. Also, a road to Carson City would connect the ring’s timber resources with the mines.”
Sharon brought in the Comstock’s leading mine surveyor, Isaac James, and said, “Can you run a road from Virginia City to the Carson River?” James said, “Yes.” Sharon replied, “Do it, then, at once.” James did. In September 1869, Henry M. Yerington drove a silver spike for the first rail of the line in Carson City; he would spend forty years as the railroad’s top executive and be the namesake of a Nevada town. On August 24, 1872, another thirty-one miles of track linked the Comstock Lode to the Central Pacific.
Now Virginia City’s ore could more easily travel to the rest of the world. We’ll talk more about the railroad that did it, and the people who built it, next time.
Construction became tied to other issues. The Central Pacific was being completed, and the federal government had helped the builders by making it easier for them to hire Chinese laborers, who were paid less. Sharon also hired Chinese workers for his railroad. Comstock miners claimed it was part of a plan to replace them with Chinese miners. They went out to the construction site and drove away the Chinese. The miners calmed down only after Sharon reassured them he wouldn’t replace them in the mines. The Chinese returned to work.
There was also the matter of geography. It’s no coincidence that mountainous areas tend to have minerals and mining. If you’ve been around the Comstock Lode, you’ve seen the proof. Surveyor and construction engineer Isaac James had quite a task on his hands with the V and T. The railroad had to go down sixteen hundred feet in the course of thirteen and a half miles from Virginia City to the Carson River. He did it without any grade exceeding two and a quarter percent—quite an achievement. To get the line up and down the mountain, it makes seventeen circles.
Partly for that reason, the Virginia and Truckee was known as the crookedest railroad in the world. There was another reason: Sharon and his method of operations. We told you he got Ormsby and Washoe Counties to help pay for construction. Sharon worked with—or on—local officials to make sure the road would get a low assessed valuation, meaning the taxes on it would be less. He and his partners from the bank, William Ralston and Darius Mills, bought out the other stockholders for a pittance and made enormous profits.
And it was the only railroad in town, so Sharon could pretty much charge what he wanted. Then other mining millionaires made their displeasure known. One of them, John Percival Jones, served five terms in the U.S. Senate from Nevada. The other was John Mackay, leader of the Bonanza Kings, owners of a huge vein under Virginia City. They threatened to build competing railroads. And they had the money to do it. THEN, Sharon lowered the rates, at least for a while.
The railroad made plenty of money for Sharon and the Bank Crowd, but the Comstock Lode was soon headed into decline. The V and T kept operating, with several spurs to nearby towns. But in 1929, it ended passenger service from Virginia City to Reno, and finally shut down on May 31, 1950.
But the V and T refused to die. In the 1970s, local investors led by Bob Gray worked to rebuild some of the line and get new locomotives. The Nevada Commission for the Reconstruction of the V and T Railway got involved later. Senator Harry Reid got federal funding and Lieutenant Governor Lorraine Hunt pushed for state money. Today, the restored V and T runs from Carson City to Virginia City and from there to Gold Hill. We Nevadans are also blessed with railroad museums in Carson City and Boulder City, and the railroad museum in Ely, all reminding us of an important part of our heritage.
