In 1859 Virginia City was a new mining camp on the slopes of Mount Davidson. By 1875 Virginia City had grown into a metropolitan, industrialized city with several mines, over 40 mills and close to 30,000 residents. In this talk, we will discuss how Virginia City made this meteoritic rise and what it would have been like to work in these mines over 2,500 feet underground 100 years before federal mine safety regulations. So, come hear Garrett Barmore, the Curator of UNR’s Keck Museum, talk about this fascinating topic that shaped northwestern Nevada.