Virginia City

Last year we headed to Virginia city for Memorial day and it started to snow so we left and didn't use all the tickets we had bought for the museums and trolly ride and stuff. So a whole year later we finally headed back wanting to fit it in before we moved.

Here we are last year...Genevieve was just a little baby! Oh, all my babies grow so much in a year!

We headed up on Wednesday when Stew had his day off. It was a pretty drive up there with really pretty views. Then we headed to the way it was museum and then did some shopping and got the kids some ice cream and then we did the tramp ride and the old school house museum. It was fun but a little weird too.

 It was a wild west town, it was a gold rush mining town where millions and millions of gold and silver were mined. Lots of the wealth that was made there helped build up San Fransisco with all its multimillionaires and hot shots of the time. It was interesting to see the old mines and how they worked and just how awful their conditions were and how deep they went down in the ground. They used so many trees from Tahoe to reinforce the mines and build the city up at its height that Tahoe was this ugly barren forest and the lake was dirty and full of waste - thank goodness for conservationists! On my mother's side there are miners, in fact my grand father was a miner before they came out west, so I appreciated learning what was involved in that hard life style. I guess on average a miner at that time would make something like $1.25  a day but in Virginia city they made 4.00 so it was the best pay for its time. Men came form all over the world to work there...in the grave yard there are interesting sections for the different nationalities and religious secs. One mine was so deep that it was located by a hot air vent and the miners were working in 145 degrees temperatures and could only work for ten minute shifts and then they had to be lifted out and go into a  refrigeration room to get their body temperatures back down before they could go back down the shaft again. Just crazy stuff like that. Mark Twain lived there for a time and at its height over 4,000 people called it home where today only a 1000 do. With lots of mining for gold and silver there was lots of gambling, and prostitution which are not my interests at all and it sort of bothers me that those things still go on there but I did love seeing what the ladies wore back then, playing with old type writers, seeing old medical equipment, and seeing giant old phones and such. It was cool to show the kids things how they used to be. I'm glad we had time to take a day trip up there.