Empire and the Carson River Mills

When the Comstock struck silver in 1859, the ore had to be crushed near water, and the Carson River offered the most of it. Mills rose along the river east of Carson City around the town of Empire—first the small mill that grew into the Mexican in 1860, then the Brunswick, Merrimac, Vivian, Santiago, and more. For over forty years they pounded Virginia City's ore into bullion, fed first by wagon and after 1869 by the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. As the mines played out, the mills fell silent. Empire is now absorbed into Carson City along U.S. 50.

What the plaque says

When the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859, the problem of reducing the ore from the fabulously rich Virginia City mines had to be solved. Mills were built in Gold Canyon and Six Mile Canyon. In Washoe Valley, at Dayton, and on the Carson River which offered the most abundant source of water for generating power to operate the mills. On the east shore of the river near the town of Empire the first small mill, built in 1860, was later enlarged to become the Mexican. The site of this mill lies to the southwest. Other large mills were then built downstream. spurring the growth of the town of Empire. Ore was hauled to the mills at first by wagon and later by the famous Virginia and Truckee Railroad built in 1869. Fortunes in gold and silver were produced in over 40 years of operation by the Carson River mills including the Mexican, Yellowjacket, Brunswick, Vivian, Merrimac, and Santiago. Traces of Empire and its mills can still be seen today.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — 3.6 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 5.5 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• Chollar Mine — 8.5 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Virginia City — 9.0 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand

More markers nearby

• Trans-Sierran Pioneer Flight — 2.5 mi
• The Warm Springs Hotel and Nevada State Prison — 2.5 mi
• Mound House — 2.7 mi
• Corbett-Fitzsimmon Flight — 3.3 mi