Discovery and early development A group of miners discovered gold here in early 1859 when they traveled from the mining town of Johnstown to investigate a small yellow hill that one of them had noticed on an earlier trip. The prospectors included James Finney, Alexander Henderson, John Bishop and John Yount. Early panning results––averaging around 15 cents of gold per pan––prompted the miners to establish a mining camp at the site. What the prospectors uncovered, and were unaware of at the time, was the southern section of the
Comstock Lode. The group named the site, Gold Hill after the yellow hill where they discovered gold. When daily earnings from panning gold reached $20 a day, most of the miners from the towns of
Johntown and
Dayton moved to Gold Hill.
Mining and industry Gold Hill became a major mining and milling center in the 1860s and 1870s. From the beginning, the district was known for its "Little Gold Hill Mines", which comprised the original claims of Finney, John Bishop, Henry Comstock and several others. These mines were the major producing mines of the Gold Hill District in the early 1860s. For the period, 1866–1876, the "Little Gold Hill Mines" produced approximately 160,000 tons, yielding about $3,520,000. Later, all these claims became part of the Consolidated Imperial Mine. In the early 1870s, the largest producers in the district were the Crown Point, Belcher and Yellow Jacket mines. Gold Hill enjoyed prosperity throughout the early-to-mid 1870s. The town's population peaked at 8000 in 1877. Millions of tons of ore were produced in Gold Hill. The main producers were the Belcher, Confidence, Crown Point, Imperial, Kentuck, and Yellow Jacket mines. Among the earliest and largest mills were the Atlas; Empire; Imperial; Pacific; Petaluma; Piute; Rhode Island; and Stewart, Kirkpatrick and Co., all located in Gold Canyon.
Community and town life The first building erected in Gold Hill was a small frame structure on Main Street in the summer of 1859. The next building was a small boarding house and restaurant. It was built of logs from the hills surrounding the town. The third building was a one-story frame house, , and was used as a grocery store. There were also several primitive shacks thrown together, in which many families made their homes. Most miners lived in tents and simple dwellings made of brush. In 1860, the census showed a population in Gold Hill of 638 men with 14 women and 179 dwellings. The town was incorporated December 17, 1862, in order to prevent its annexation by its larger neighbor. The town's population expanded rapidly in the early 1860s at the same time that nearby Virginia City was also having a population explosion. By 1863, Gold Hill was a large town consisting of mines, mills, stores, homes, restaurants, offices, hotels and saloons. Growth slowed in the late 1860s but picked up again with the construction in 1869 of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad and the discovery of the Crown Point-Belcher Bonanza in 1871. Although in the shadow of neighboring
Virginia City, Gold Hill, nonetheless enjoyed a lively entertainment industry. The
Gold Hill Daily News was established in 1863, and Gold Hill enjoyed a theater by 1862. The demographic mirrored Virginia City where one third of the population was engaged in mining. Newspaperman Alfred Doten is associated with the town. His numerous journals, available at the University of Nevada, Reno Special Collections, provide a rich and detailed history of his experiences in the American West during the nineteenth century.
Decline and twentieth-century revival By the late 1870s, mining activity across the Comstock Lode had begun to decline. The town reached a population of about 8,000 in 1877, after which the town entered a long period of decline. In the late 1870s, Gold Hill began a steady decline. As mining production dininished, mines and businesses gradually closed. Gold Hill experienced a brief revival during the 1920s, when a large cyanide mill was established at nearby American Flat, and several of the closed mines were reworked. Despite this renewed activity, long-term decline continued. The
Virginia & Truckee Railroad ceased operations in 1938, its tracks were removed in 1941. The post office finally closed in 1943. The track was extended to Gold Hill in 1992, and in 1994 the Gold Hill Historical Society was established to preserve the Gold Hill depot, one of the few wooden structures in the region that survived the 1875 fire in Virginia City. After ten years of applying for grants, lobbying, and collecting steel rail donations by the Gold Hill Historical Society, the mayor of Carson City approved the letting out to bid of a contract to reconstruct the railroad between Gold Hill and the Carson River, away. ==Notable people==