"There has never been a place like the Comstock or a city like Virginia or a gathering of brilliant men such as those who assembled there". So writes Henry Stoddard in this unforgettable memoir of Virginia City, Nevada.Stoddard is drawn to Virginia City in the early 1860s. A reporter on the town's daily newspaper, The Territorial Enterprise, he comes to know all who make the town and are made by it: among them, a young Missourian named Sam Clemens, who prospers as a writer for the Enterprise and transforms himself into Mark Twain; and a Quaker named William Wright, who begins writing comic sketches under the name of Dan de Quille and becomes a legend. Stoddard also comes to know the men who went down into the bowels of the earth to wrest the riches from it, toiling in hellish heat and untold dangers for $4 a day.