Mound House

Mound House was located one-half mile north of this point. Originally constructed in 1871 as a station and siding on the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, it served for some time simply as a wood and water stop. In 1877, a post office was established. Mound House came into its own in 1880, when the V and T began construction of a narrow-gauge railroad from here to the mining camps of western Nevada and the Owens Valley region of California. Named the Carson and Colorado, it turned Mound House into a booming shipping point. , The Southern Pacific Railroad purchased the C and C from the V and T in 1900, just prior to the Tonopah silver strike. In 1905, the Southern Pacific built a short line from its new station at Hazen, on the main line, to intersect the C and C at Fort Churchill. The Hazen cutoff took most of the booming Tonopah-Goldfield business away from the V and T. , From 1900 to 1920, extensive gypsum mining and milling operations, to produce plaster, were carried on immediately northwest of Mound House. , The narrow-gauge line was abandoned from Mound House to Fort Churchill in 1934 and the V and T track from Carson City to Virginia City in 1938. Within a few years, Mound House had disappeared.