The business section of Virginia City amounted to one store and a post office, which opened in 1868 and closed in 1869. It was in 1866 that three men sent to do assessment work on a previously located copper property near the top of Baldy Mountain camped one night on Willow Creek where they accidentally discovered rich gold placers. The site was on the Maxwell Land Grant. When a camp began to form, Maxwell named it for his daughter, Virginia. Before Virginia City had a chance to mature, the populace moved to the more promising camp of Elizabethtown, five miles to the northwest, dooming Maxwell's dream of a booming metropolis.
Nothing remains to mark the site of Virginia City.
Courtesy Henry Chenoweth.