Comstock Firemen's Museum is Hot Commodity in Virginia City

Comstock Firemen's Museum in Virginia City (courtesy of Sydney Martinez/Travel Nevada)

  With all the various attractions in the historic Nevada mining town of Virginia City, it’s easy to overlook one of the most unique—the Comstock Firemen’s Museum.

  Located on the town’s main street at 125 South C Street, the museum is also free, although donations are much appreciated.

  The museum, which was established in 1979 by Virginia City’s volunteer fire department, is exactly what the name says, a repository of 19th century Comstock region firefighting equipment, uniforms, and vehicles, all accented by displays containing historic photographs and information.

  Part of the reason that Virginia City acquired such an impressive array of then-state-of-the-art firefighting equipment was because of the impact deadly fires had on the community in the late 19th century.

  The worst conflagration occurred with the Great Fire of 1875, which resulted in the burning of the majority of the city and millions of dollars in damage.

  As a result, the museum contains a number of unusual firefighting gear including fire grenades (a glass bottle or orb usually containing liquid to extinguish a fire, such as salt water) and vintage rope life-nets, used to catch a person leaping from a burning building.

  Additionally, the museum boasts Nevada’s oldest and longest-serving fire apparatus, an 1839 Christian Hight four-wheel hand-drawn hose carriage as well as an 1856 Lysander Button & Co. hand-drawn, hand-pumped fire engine and several two-wheeled hand-drawn hose carts from the early 1870s.

  Other historic equipment on display include an 1877 Kimball & Co. horse-drawn hose carriage, an 1879 steam-powered fire engine, and an 1880 hand-drawn, hand-pumped fire engine.

  Some of the historic equipment on display have appeared in movies, including “In Old Chicago,” released in 1937, “The Santa Fe Trail,” released in 1940, and “The Man Behind the Gun,” which came out in 1953.

  Displays around the tightly-packed museum spotlight various firefighting tools, uniform shirts, leather belts and helmets, emergency lights and sirens, vintage fire extinguishers, a host of nozzle tips, hose adaptors and fittings, and uniform insignia.

  The museum is housed in an historic brick structure, erected in 1876 (right after the Great Fire) that previously housed a broker’s business, a meat market, a saloon and a brewery. It also was home of the Storey County Fire Department from 1930 until the 1960s.

  A good overview of the museum can be found on the Virginia City Tourism Commission’s website, which has an audio tour of the facility (listen at: https://visitvirginiacitynv.com/firehouse-museum-audio-tour/).

  The Comstock Firemen’s Museum, also known as the Nevada State Firemen’s Museum/Liberty Engine Company No. 1, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from May to October, and on weekends (weather permitting) during November and December. For more information, go to http://www.comstockfiremuseum.com.