Virginia and Truckee Railroad Right-of-Way

This line carried the Comstock's wealth and its weight. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad reached Reno in 1872, extending north from Carson City and Virginia City through Washoe Valley to meet the transcontinental line. Down these rails came silver bullion and up went the timber and supplies the mines devoured; at its height it was among the richest short lines in the country. Stops through Washoe Valley served the vanished towns of Franktown, Washoe City, and Steamboat. The tracks were pulled up in 1950, the Comstock long dead. The right-of-way remains, traceable across the valley the trains once crossed.

What the plaque says

The Virginia & Truckee Railroad was built between 1868 and 1872 to connect the mining and milling communities of the Comstock to the Central Pacific Railroad that ran through Reno. The line first connected Virginia City to Carson City in 1869, but work to run the railroad north moved quickly. Soon after Chinese laborers graded this section during the summer of 1871, track gangs commenced laying rail south, reaching Steamboat Springs by late October. Nine months later, Superintendent Henry M. Yerington drove the last spike a mile west of Carson City on August 24, 1872, connecting Virginia City with Reno by rail. Although regularly scheduled passenger service didn’t begin until October 1, the first through train traversed the 52 mile route on September 1, 1872 - the last passed by here on May 31, 1950.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Reno — 0.8 mi
  The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World
• Virginia City — 17 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
• Chollar Mine — 17 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
• Sand Harbor — 23 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Reno — 0.6 mi
• Frederik Joseph DeLongchamps — 0.6 mi
• Site of Nevada’s First Public Library — 0.6 mi
• Lake Mansion Home of Myron C. Lake Founder of Reno 1877 — 0.6 mi