Silver mining in Nevada

In 1859, several prospectors discovered its rich lode silver ore, and a great rush of miners poured eastward from California, and established Gold Hill and Virginia City, the principal towns of the Comstock Lode.

The Comstock was the first important silver-mining district in the United States, and its discovery stimulated a great deal of prospecting for silver across the Great Basin area of the United States.

[3]: 88–93 The ore bodies are replacement deposits of silver and gold-bearing galena in Paleozoic sedimentary rocks.

Early production was of the oxidized zone, where the galena was altered to cerussite and anglesite in a gangue of limonite, goethite, and calcite.

[6] Mining in the Pioche district in Lincoln County began in 1869 from silver veins in the Cambrian Prospect Mountain quartzite.

Replacement manto-type ore bodies were later discovered in the Highland Peak Limestone of Cambrian age.

[7] The last great silver-mining district to be developed in Nevada was Tonopah, in Nye County, discovered in 1900.