Letter: We need to collaborate, contribute and celebrate the Comstock in the manner the painting depicts
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Fri, 10/31/2014 - 5:01am
The Comstock Foundation for History and Culture has established a paramount goal of “enabling a sustainable network economy and culture by preserving and elevating the uniqueness of the Comstock Lode experience.”
The Foundation was created to subordinate to the needs of the district, some critically urgent if not already in an emergency state. The Foundation is only a small cog in a larger network of people and organizations that love this territory and where collaboration, not conflict, provides the hope of a lasting legacy of the great past.
Even so it has already saved critical culture assets, like the Yellow Jacket joist and chute works, the main Dayton Consolidated mill structures and portions of the Donovan Mill from collapse or loss, amongst many others.
When I first visited, over five years ago, this territory encompassing the Comstock Lode, I immediately felt remorse that I wasn’t alive when Virginia City and the Bonanzas were most so.
I can only imagine the mining camps in Virginia City, Gold Hill, Silver City, and Dayton in early 1864, and wonder if they had an inkling of the lasting effect they were having on what would soon become Nevada, the West, and on the United States of America, as a whole. What I would give to walk C Street, dressed well and proud, in awe of its populace, bluster, and influence. I pause and wonder if I could survive the exciting contradiction of “highly civil, if not Cosmopolitan, vs. brutally tough,” and I think, yes, maybe.
My thoughts quickly shift back to 2014, burdened with a strong sense of responsibility for protecting this National Legacy. The old mines and scarcely existing mills, like Dayton Consolidated, Donovan and Crown Point, hold historical treasures of mining technology and culture that remain at risk of permanent loss. We inherently know we can’t just protect and preserve but that we must also restore, enhance, and celebrate this historic Comstock District. This concept of arrested decay provides a false sense of sufficiency, where it is clearly not. We cannot sit by and watch the structures decay, collapse and be lost for future generations.

In pursuing this we need to protect individual rights and lifestyles in this living community while simultaneously developing the collective assets of the Comstock. There are some who are stuck in a more recent past such that it is disabling their ability to recognize the need to preserve it.
Sadly, relatively very little remains from what once stood proud but what does remain is magnificent and we cannot lose the precious part of our cultured past. Mining has changed, attitudes have changed, techniques have changed and yes, it is possible good people are here to do good things.
We need to collaborate, contribute and celebrate the Comstock, in the very manner that “Nine Cheers for the Silver State" depicts, then and now.
We can embrace a diverse economy that generates wealth and jobs in the community, protects the landscape, and preserves our national legacy before it is totally lost, or worse, deemed irrelevant to visit and enjoy. Only then will the Comstock be a truly self-sustaining, economically vibrant community that fully expresses and accurately celebrates its importance.
Corrado DeGasperis
Chairman, Comstock Foundation for History & Culture
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