Water Supply to the Comstock, the Marlette Lake Water System

Since the first mining of silver in the Washoe Mountains of Utah Territory in 1859, water was a precious commodity. Initially it was obtained from natural springs and tunnels dug into the sides of the mountains above Virginia City and Gold Hill. But the mines required huge amounts of water that couldn’t be supplied by the springs. In October 1871, civil engineer Hermann Schussler prepared a report for the Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company which proposed a 7-mile-long 11.5-inch riveted wrought iron inverted siphon pipeline from high in the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe, across the Washoe Valley, to discharge in a flume that fed a storage reservoir near Virginia City. The dynamic pressure head at the lowest point in the pipeline was approximately 1,900 feet, the highest in the world at that time. The pipe fabrication started in March 1873, and the project was completed in August 1873. A second pipeline was completed in 1875, a 3,994-foot tunnel was added in 1877, and a third pipeline in 1887. Each of the pipelines also included flumes constructed to convey water to the pressure pipelines and from the end of the pressure pipelines to Virginia City. The Marlette Lake Water System was dedicated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1975, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.