The Comstock System of Water Supply
The Virginia City and Gold Hill Water Works
When silver was first discovered on the Comstock, the flow of water from natural springs was sufficient to supply all the wants of the small communities then constituting the towns of Gold Hill and Virginia City. As the population increased, wells were dug in many places (distant from springs), and the domestic needs of many families were for a long time supplied by water-carts that peddled the water of both wells and springs. Presently the water of several tunnels added to the available stock, but as mills and hoisting works multiplied, the demand for water for use in steam boilers became so great that it was impossible to supply it without creating a water famine among the people of the two towns, now thousands in number, with hundreds of new arrivals every week. In this emergency the Virginia City and Gold Hill Water Company was formed. Outside of mining companies it is the oldest incorporation on the Comstock Lode. The only available supply of water at that time was that flowing from a few tunnels that had been run into the mountain above the city for mining purposes. This was collected by means of ditches and wooden flumes, and stored in large wooden tanks, whence it was distributed about the city through iron pipes. When this supply became insufficient, as it soon did, tunnels were run for the express purpose of tapping water. As these drained out the hills and failed, new ones were run in the range both north and south of the city for a distance of several miles.
Finally every device was exhausted, and the hills above the level of the city were thoroughly drained. It then became necessary to look to the main range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In those mountains was an inexhaustible supply of the purest and best water to be found in the whole world, but between the lakes, creeks, and sparkling fountains of the Sierras and the range on which stood Virginia City, lay Washoe Valley, an immense trough nearly 2,000 feet in depth. How to get water over such a depression was the question. Mr. H. Schussler, an engineer of great repute, and who had planned the Spring Valley Water Works of San Francisco, was brought to Nevada to view the situation. He said the deep valley could be crossed, and in the spring of 1872 surveys were made and an order given Eastern manufacturers for the construction of a large wrought-iron pipe. The first section of the big pipe was laid June 11, 1873, and the last on the twenty-fifth day of July of the same year.