George Gohn, a butcher by trade, came to Alder Gulch with the first rush in June of 1863. A member of the vigilance committee and later elected to several county offices, Gohn ran a local meat market. The Gohn family lived in the house next door…

Dredge mining in the late 1890s brought new life to Virginia City and a dire need for modern office and meeting space. In 1896, town citizens voted to issue bonds to build a multipurpose City Hall with space for the city, law offices, and social…

Virginia City’s alleys, just like its main streets, hold many fine examples of territorial-era buildings. This barn, built for surgeon Dr. Ira Smith in 1874, represents a classic Montana horse barn. Virginia City’s earliest barns were built from…

In the mid-1860s stores, hotels, and businesses lined both sides of Jackson Street near Idaho. The road was bustling with pedestrians and noisy teams of horses and wagons traveling on the toll road that led South to Summit. The Tootle, Leach &…

Henry Gilbert and Christian Richter brought German-style lager beer to thirsty Virginia City miners in 1864 and began bottling it in this stone and brick building in 1875. For much of the nineteenth century, American brewers made a heavier,…

Like the Picture Gallery, the Elling Store, and several others, this 1946 building and its neighbor to the left are a faithful reconstruction of the originals. The Elephant Auction House occupied these storefronts from summer 1863 until October…

Fire swept through this block in 1915 destroying all the wood-frame buildings between Stonewall Hall on the west and the F. R. Merk building on the east. Originally this site was home to a small, wood-frame, false-front building. Hellman & Co.…

Carpenter Julius Kohls purchased this property in 1882, where he built a one-room log cabin and a combination wood shed and outhouse. In contrast to most of the town’s 1860s-era gold-rush log buildings, Kohls’ cabin does not have hand-notched logs…

The Elling, Knight & Buford hardware store, located in the Masonic Temple, built this warehouse in July 1901. Although seemingly mundane, such storage buildings were essential to keeping Virginia City residents supplied with consumer goods. Even…

In the mid-1860s, the east end of Idaho Street, where this cabin once stood, was “suburban,” a place that families could settle away from the dust and noise of downtown. At first, most lived in small cabins like this one, but by the mid-1880s,…