Storey County, Nevada

Storey County was organized in 1861 and named for Captain Edward Storey, who died in the 1860 Pyramid Lake War. Its story starts in 1859, when prospectors made two strikes of silver and gold ore near Virginia City. The National Park Service calls it the first major silver strike in the U.S. From 1860 to 1880 the mines took out and milled nearly seven million tons of ore. About 4,000 people lived in Virginia City and Gold Hill in 1862, and about 25,000 by 1874. Both towns now sit inside a National Historic Landmark district with Silver City and Dayton, along with open land full of old mine sites. Samuel Clemens was on the Territorial Enterprise payroll as a local reporter by September 1862. His Carson City dispatches in the paper’s February 3, 5, and 8, 1863 issues are the first known use of the name Mark Twain. At the county’s north edge, Derby Dam on the Truckee River was the first project of the new U.S. Reclamation Service. Work started on October 2, 1903, and finished in May 1905. The dam was built to turn river water toward irrigated farms in the Newlands Project. On the Comstock, keep out of old shafts and adits.