Nevada Side Trip: Carson City and Lake Tahoe

We're taking a small break from the interstate and heading south of Reno to Nevada's cute state capitol and one of the most gorgeous lakes in the world. We're also in true Western territory, with some of the largest ghost towns and silver mines in American history close by as well. 

Transcript

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to our Armchair Road trip where we follow Interstate 80 from San Francisco to New York City. Um, wow. My mind went blank right after that. While we are driving. Trying to stick to the interstate where we are sticking to it all the way across. There are a few times where I think a side trip is warranted and one of those times is not that far into the trip, and it is through Tahoe and Carson City. Theoretically leaving Sacramento, we could have gone another way, which let me find the road. It's US 50, so we could have taken us 50 out instead of Interstate eight, which would've taken us up into South Lake Tahoe and then up and around into Carson City and Interstate five 80 up into Reno. We didn't do that, obviously. We had to go through the Donner Pass and talk about that lovely story, but it would be a travesty to travel through this part of the country and not. Take the small detour. And we can talk about Tahoe and Carson City. So I'm going to talk about this as if we made it to Reno and then we're driving south and then we'll go fiddle around in Lake Tahoe, Carson City area, and then just drive back north and meet up right where we left off. Although it is entirely possible that if you wanna skip the Interstate 80 part of the Sierra Nevadas and the Donner Party and all of that fun, you could just drive us 50 up and over into Lake Tahoe directly and then down into Carson City and then meet up in Reno. As I mentioned, I do love state capitals and it is one of my goals to visit every state capitol and take a photograph of it. I don't know why, and I've kind of slowed down for a minute because now it's getting a lot harder because they're in places that I do not frequent at all for work or for fun. Like 2019 was a great year because we got to see Carson City in Sacramento. Then there's other places that it's like, oh yeah, you know what? It's an hour away from where I'm going to be. I'll drive. So I have yet to make to the Carolinas, the Dakotas, Delaware, so a state capitals go, Carson City is kind of very low key. Almost as if you took a movie set of an old Western film and then decided to say, Hey, this is the state capitol, which I think is what they're going for. The feel of it. It is very much a frontier town, so let's get started by talking about it. Okay. Well, and its frontier attitude probably comes from its name. It was named for Kit Carson, who was a famous Frontiers man, and Kit Carson was the man who guided John c Fremont around the Western United States, and his name pops up a lot in place names and. As kind of the first European or the first man of European descent to see a lot of the Western United States and to actually describe it and somewhat map it. And he got a lot of his information from Kit Carson. So it's only fair that Kit Carson gets a capital city in the Western United States named after him. However, we do have to acknowledge that he did not like fame, so he probably would be very upset that there's a whole city named after him, even though it's not very big. Carson City because it kind of was the first place. Reno wasn't really a thing at the time. Carson City was a very popular stopover for people walking the California Trail. Of course, it sits in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, just on the other side of California. After its founding, it would very quickly become important in its own right because of the Comstock load. I think the Comstock load is often talked about, or you hear it in passing, but if you are like me who have heard it a thousand times, or your dad likes to watch lots of Western movies, and so you hear about it, Comstock or the load or the mother load, that's a, that's a fun phrase. We use a thought. If you're like me and didn't know anything about it, well here's the chance to actually figure out what it all is about. The Comstock load was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States. You could find it in large quantities in other parts of the Americas, namely in Mexico and Bolivia present day. I happen to live under a silver mine during a two year. Religious mission in Mexico and security was tight. We talked with employees and they were scanned and weighed to see if they were taking any silver out. Anyways, so the Comstock load is the first major discovery in the United States, so that's a big deal. Kind of can stick it to Spain and Mexico, I guess. I don't know. It was located near Virginia City, which is 16 miles northeast of Carson City. So now the region is hopping with prospectors. It also is important for its mining innovations. They used square set timbering here, which is a way to support underground shafts, and I guess this was revolutionary. I don't know that much about mining, but there you go. They would take heavy timber cubes essentially and set them into the shaft because one of the main dangers would be a collapse and square set. Timbering would have been a lifesaver. Literally. The second thing that came out of the Comstock Load, Virginia City, Carson City mining era, was the Washoe process, which if you're paying attention to the signs you will have seen Washoe as the county. Where Reno is, but this process is used to extract silver from ore using salt and a form of copper sulfate with mercury in a pan that would agitate it. Once again, I'm not a minor, I don't know a lot of metallurgy and from, from what I did gather in the research and trying to figure out all of this that, uh, the watch show process has actually. Been pushed aside for more modern, cleaner ways of extracting silver, and once again, it would not be a trip to a capital city without visiting the state capitol. It is kind of an underwhelming little place, and I don't mean little in a pejorative way. It's cute, it's quaint, it's charming For Frontier Town, it was constructed between 1869 and 1871 in the Neoclassical Italianate style. It sounds fancy for a small frontier town, and the first thing you probably noticed is that it does not look like a typical capitol building so that it has that going for it. The state obviously would outgrow this capitol very quickly, and by the early 19 hundreds it was woefully inadequate for governing the state of Nevada. Nevada is an interesting place, especially living in a state adjacent to Nevada, that it is an extremely wealthy state, but it's not in a typical wealthy way that you'd see, say in the Midwest or California or New York. But the, the wealth is literally mineral wealth, but also in gambling. And so you have to have a lot of regulations for all of those. And they didn't have enough room to, to make them and to make sure that the its citizens were following them. So they had to have an architect create two annex wings for the legislature and to the point where it is so small today that it is a museum and only the governor's office is in there. The legislature now meets in a building next to the state capitol that is much better for their needs. Hmm. So yay for Carson City. But silver is still very important in Nevada, and I think it'd be a travesty to not talk about silver while we're in the silver state, Nevada. So silver is an important mineral, not because, not only because it's monetary value, but also because of its practical uses. If you have a device with an on off button, which I am sitting here and I'm counting many, there's many, many on off buttons that I can see right here for my seat. Chances are, is that it has silver in the on off button. Silver can purify water when ionized. It has a molecular structure similar to ice, which then makes it useful in cloud seeding. Hmm. Is that good? Is that bad? Another debate for another drive. Silver is also integral to solar panel production, as I mentioned earlier, Nevada's nickname is the Silver State, and here's why. So they did find the Comstock load in 1858, and even to this day, Nevada is the second largest minor of silver in a state after Alaska. Most silver is now mined, uh, mines away from Carson City actually in the Rochester mine near Lovelock, Nevada. The Comstock load production peaked in 1877 and was centered on Virginia City. So this town, Virginia City, eclipsed many, many western towns and population. In the 1870s, it had 25,000 residents. And you can kind of see this, they would build these semi opulent opera houses, saloons. This town had it all in the 2020 census. It had 787 people. So their, their fortunes have waned. At the time of the mining room, all silver would be purchased by the federal government for use in coinage. Obviously, they wouldn't have known all about on off buttons for electrical devices that would've used silver. So it was really useful for its monetary value and it was often considered the monetary equal of gold. Dun, dun, dun. So when they hit the load of silver, it was the mother load. Sorry, that was, that was sitting there. Virginia City then became extremely wealthy and a lot of this wealth would be reflected in San Francisco. And San Francisco was considered its coastal cousin, and I guess it's, at the time San Francisco would've been very, would considered to be very rough compared with its Eastern siblings like New York. But compared to its. Frontier, Virginia City mining town, it probably would've seemed very fancy, and obviously a lot of the people who got wealthy off of the Virginia Load would end up in San Francisco. So there's that. Virginia City is also for the literature lovers, it is the first place that Samuel Clemens first used his famous pen name of Mark Twain. So if you wanna see that place, Virginia City's the place to go. I mentioned earlier, that the Comstock load helped innovate mining with, uh, SC set timbering and the Washoe process and how to extract the silver. But now, today. The Nevada Mining Association has been a award, has been awarded as the one of the top 10 mining organizations in the world, so I bet that means they have a, an amazing safety record and they're probably not that bad to work for. I don't know. I'm not exactly a minor. I am not intending to be a minor, but to be one of the top 10 mining organizations in the world, that's, that's very impressive. However, as we talk about silver mining in Nevada, almost all silver mine in Nevada is actually a byproduct of gold mining today. That's curious. Just, I mean, we always have this idea of in, um, prospectors out there shaking the pan in the stream, searching for those famous gold flakes and water, and imagine now they're just like, oh, we found some silver. Put it in the silver pile, nevada. Mines 78% of American gold, 5% of the world total. So, Nevada, extremely rich in minerals and, uh, silver and gold in particular. However, if you're not really into mining or frontier towns. I guess this is the time you've been waiting for. We're gonna head to Lake Tahoe. I think this is one of the most famous lakes in the United States. It's one of the most picturesque by far. And so here we go. Lake Tahoe does sit on the border between California, Nevada at an elevation of 6,223 feet above sea level. This makes it the largest alpine lake in North America, and it is the largest lake by volume after the Great Lakes in the United States, and despite being at this altitude, it has never frozen over completely. That's interesting. Would love to figure out that it is also the second deepest lake in the United States after Crater Lake in Oregon at a depths of 1,645 feet. That's deep. That's very deep. That's scary deep. And I don't do well with deep water. So stand on a beach, let the waves rush, like. There are people who are afraid of sharks just standing in the ocean up to their knees. I don't have that problem. No, I have a problem when it's deep, and by deep I mean anything over like eight feet. Okay? Yep. The name Tahoe comes from a Washoe word, meaning the lake, which then. That creates a geographical tautology, which is essentially a doubled up name. So it's lake, the lake, and this happens all over the United States and the world. It's fascinating. Wikipedia has a whole article that just lists places that are tautologies. So it's Lake the Lake, and it has one outlet, the Truckee River. Which runs down past Reno and then into Pyramid Lake, lake Tahoe is also super famous because of the infamous blizzards and snow depth of Sierra Nevada. There are 15 ski areas, so if you're a winter weather person that loves to be out and snowboarding and skiing, have at it. I still will say this though, Utah still has the greatest snow on earth. Gotta put the plug there. Mark Twain said that. Seeing Lake Tahoe was quote the fairest picture. The whole earth affords I disagree with that one. I think there are better places, but it is quite a spectacular sight, sight to see the, the water is exceptionally blue, which is why it's really famous and it's blue because it, the water's extremely clear. There's not a lot of. Stuff floating around in that, that water, water absorbs red light, which then allows blue to be reflected back better than the other colors. So why is it so clear despite being in the mountains with all this runoff? 40% of the precipitation feeding the lake falls directly onto the lake. Which in many other places, it falls somewhere on land and then eventually collects into streams and then rivers, and then they eventually bring all that sediment. Lake Tahoe gets to avoid all that of that. There are places where you can see down to 70 feet. Once again, spooky, spooky, spooky, but except it makes for an exceptionally blue and clear lake so while it is clear and you can see very deeply into the lake,. In the 1960s. They measured that, that you could see up to 100 feet deep. So there's that. Once again, not trying to dwell on that. And even though Lake Tahoe is super pretty, there's lots of great pictures of it, I am of the opinion that Crater Lake is better. Sorry, I'm just putting that out there. Crater Lake's too far off this, uh, interstate 80 to actually talk about. But if you're looking for very blue lakes that are deep and high up in mountains. I highly suggest Crater Lake, although Lake Tahoe is more accessible, crater Lake's kind of a beast to get to. So that's our little side trip. Like I said, it's not that long of a, the an episode but it is worth the jaunt. I will say that Carson City and Lake Tahoe, they are worth it to go see, just not spend as much time. So let's turn the car around and head back to Reno and keep going with our trip across the country. Hope you've enjoyed Lake Tahoe and silver mining. What a, what a combination right? Nevada Place of contrasts.