In Virginia City mines, men plunged into the scalding, hazardous heart of the earth for riches that provided fine productions of Shakespeare, food rivaling the finest in New York, and frocks direct from Paris, all in a windswept middle-of-nowhere town. Here a penniless Irish miner amassed a fortune in a few short years, writer Mark Twain discovered and honed his comic voice, and notorious badman Sam Brown was lined with lead. Virginia City’s twenty turbulent bonanza years—what a time it was!