Nevadans for Cultural Preservation

Speaker Series Presentation by Margo Memmott, RPA with Broadbent

Virginia City, Nevada within the Comstock Mining District has been extensively photographed from the time silver and gold were first discovered in 1859. The subjects of the photographs are vast and include the hulking industrial shaft houses and mills; the Victorian houses, crowded commercial buildings; steam trains spewing thick black smoke; dirty hard-working miners; prominent Euro-American businessmen; and bustling street scenes. In the background of these images, Comstock photographers also sometimes preserved images of the Native American camps where people were living and working in between the mines, haul roads, and railroad tracks. These images demonstrate the cultural persistence of the Northern Paiute in the Great Basin in the face of rapid industrialization and occupation by outsiders.