Know Your Gold History
Nevada’s mining story broke ground before it was even an official state, as pioneers made their way west to the California goldfields in the mid 1800s. Some folks practiced prospecting along the way, but after Nevada’s first gold discovery in what would become Dayton, many stuck around to see what else they might find. Turns out, just up the hill, it’d be the largest silver discovery in the world, instantly calling thousands of westward miners “back east” to get a piece of the colossal Comstock Lode. The boom years of the first major discovery in the United States produced more than $300 million bucks, much of which helped fund development of the West Coast, flipped the bill for the Civil War, and officially made Nevada the Silver State
