Discovery of the Comstock Lode
- When
- 1859
- Where
- Head of Six Mile Canyon, where prospecting began (not a confirmed exact discovery point)
Peter O'Riley and Patrick McLaughlin discovered the Comstock Lode in 1859, prospecting at the head of Six Mile Canyon, sparking a silver rush.
In the spring of 1859, Peter O'Riley and Patrick McLaughlin, finding all the paying ground already claimed, went to the head of Six Mile Canyon and began prospecting with a rocker on the slope of the mountain near a small stream fed from a neighboring spring. They are credited with the discovery of the Comstock Lode. After the discovery was made public in 1859, it sparked a silver rush of prospectors to the area, scrambling to stake their claims.
Sources
- Comstock Lode Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-21
- Virginia City, Nevada Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-27
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.