Virginia City is a living 'Ghost Town' memorializing the good ole, bad days of the gold and silver rush in Nevada. 'C' Street still stands as it was, with buildings, shops and taverns looking much the way it was in the late 1800's when over 30,000 people swarmed into the area in their search for riches. Most of the buildings are the original structures, which reflect the times, the economy and the type of commerce that frontier society attracted to gold towns, with the preponderance of taverns still in existence.

After gold was discovered out west, many towns sprang up, with Virginia City marking the biggest draw in the Rocky Mountain West. The town flourished in the 1860's and continued to do so for a number of years until the flow of gold and silver diminished and prospectors moved on to new towns in the area to be closer to new mineral discoveries. By the late 1890's only a handful of people remained in Virginia City, creating the appearance of a 'Ghost Town'. By the turn of the century, a concerted effort by the few remaining residents of Virginia City began a move to preserve the town as a historical entity, and plans were made to put a process into action. Plans were eventually made to build a museum to house some of the original artifacts. Then with the rise of the automobile in the 1920's, Virginia City began to draw greater numbers of tourists; and by the mid 1930's the tourists numbered about 6,500 each summer. The number of tourists by the early 2000's reached over 70,000 a year, with the greatest proportion of tourists arriving in the summer months.