Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 4

NEVADA RENO AZETTE-JOURN ALRGJ. COM SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 2006 Old mining town had elaborate gravity-powered water system wVy Sri PROVIDED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Virginia City's bonanza years were in the mid-1 870s. LISA J. TOLDARENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL FILE The Virginia City water system was first turned on in August 1873, and improvements are planned through 2007. BY GEOFF DORNAN NEVADA APPEAL VIRGINIA CITY In the 1860s, this old Nevada mining town had everything going for it.

It was built on a mountain of silver, and people were pouring in from around the world. But despite world-class opera, fine food and, finally, more churches than brothels, one thing was missing: enough water. The town had long since outgrown the few natural springs on the surface, forcing a fledgling water company to drill into tunnels west of town where water had been flowing naturally for several years. But according to newspaper reporter Dan DeQuille, longtime chronicler of the Corn-stock, "at length, the whole top of the hill into which the tun-ftels extended appeared to be completely drained." Virginia City still had water. But most of it was deep in the mines, scaldingly hot and laden with foul-smelling, often toxic minerals.

i In 1862, the Virginia and Oold Hill Water Co. began to look for a permanent solution to the "water famine," which threatened to stunt the growth 6f Virginia City. "The kind of development he Comstock wanted to pur-Sue, they had to have a good water system," state Archivist Guy Rocha said. "As far as their own aquifer, they had messed it up With all the mining. It was not healthy water." Water and Tahoe I It didn't take long to realize water was aplenty in the Sierra Nevada above Lake Tahoe.

The problem was how to get it across the Washoe Valley below and then up to Virginia City. That's where a Swiss-educated civil engineer named Hermann Schussler came in. 5 In seeking his help, the water ft 'The kind of development the Comstock wanted to pursue, they had to have a good water system. As far as their own aquifer, they had messed it up with all the mining. It was not healthy GUY ROCHA State archivist making adjustments, small repairs and keeping the water flowing.

They're gone now, but Leahy and his crew still have to drive up a narrow, steep road to make adjustments. Leahy says the road is not much fun during the winter, and crew members rely on snowmobiles. But improvements planned over the next year will reduce the need to climb the mountain, especially in winter. Those improvements will allow Leahy and his crew to use electronics to monitor the system and make necessary adjustments remotely. A drive up the hill won't be necessary unless there's a serious problem.

And with those improvements, he said, the system should continue to supply water to its customers for years to come. gravity feed," he says. More than water The system did more than just provide drinking water to the Comstock, Leahy said. A tunnel also connected to a system of V-shaped flumes used to run logs from Lake Tahoe to a huge lumberyard. Much of that lumber was then shipped to Virginia City where it was used to build homes and businesses and to shore up the mine tunnels.

The system operates differently now because the flumes are gone. They were abandoned when the tunnel collapsed in the 1960s. In the early days, Leahy says there were as many as nine water tenders who lived in cabins along the route of the system, vided water to more than 20,000 residents in Virginia City. Rocha said the system made a full Comstock boom possible. Even more remarkable, 133 years later it's still supplying drinking water to Virginia City, Gold Hill and parts of Carson City.

The state bought the system in 1963, and it's now overseen by Mike Leahy, who says he marvels at the ingenuity and labor that went into the system so many years ago. "To think you can bring water over the Sierra to Virginia City without pumps just flowed into a flume that fed a reservoir, which supplied Virginia City and Gold Hill. The system was designed to survive more than 800 pounds per square inch of pressure and to make pumps unnecessary. Gravity did the work. Going with flow The water was finally turned on Aug.

2, 1873. The newspaper report of the event, again by DeQuille, said it took more than eight hours to fill. At its peak, the system pro company wasn't taking a chance on some unknown. Schussler was almost certainly the most prominent and innovative hy-drological engineer in the West at the time. The system he designed and built diverted water from Hobart Creek in the Sierra through a wooden flume 4.6 miles long to a tank above Washoe Valley.

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