The Great Fire of 1875

It started with a single lamp. Early on October 26, 1875, a coal-oil lamp tipped over in a boarding house, and the dry timber and the hot desert wind the locals called the Washoe zephyr did the rest. The fire ran up the mountain and through the heart of Virginia City, leveling some thirty-three blocks—three-quarters of the town—and even burning down a mine shaft. Thousands lost their homes, though remarkably few their lives. Then the town simply rebuilt: most of the brick on C Street today dates from the months after the fire.

What the plaque says

The most spectacular calamity to befall Virginia City had its origins within fifty feet of this marker. Early on the morning of October 26, 1875, a coal oil lamp was knocked over in a nearby boarding house and burst into flames. Strong winds spread the blaze and thirty-three blocks of structures were leveled. The losses included St. Mary in the Mountains Catholic Church, the Storey County Courthouse, Piper’s Opera House, the International Hotel, city offices and most of Virginia City’s business district. The offices and hoisting works of nearby mines were also destroyed. After the fire, Virginia City established a new hydrant system and erected a number of new hose houses including this structure.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Virginia City — steps away
  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
• Chollar Mine — 0.6 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
• Carson City — 12 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 — 14 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

More markers nearby

• Piper’s Opera House — steps away
• Mark Twain — steps away
• African Americans and the Boston Saloon — steps away
• Mackay Mansion — 0.3 mi