Star City was a silver-mining boom town in present-day

Pershing County, Nevada Pershing County is a county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,650. Its county seat is Lovelock. The county is listed as Nevada Historical Marker 17. The marker is at the courthouse in Lovelock. The ...

. It was located in the Star Mining District. It is now a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

. The site is marked as Nevada Historical Marker 231.

History

Star City was established in 1861 when rich

silver ore Silver is a chemical element; it has symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. Silver is found in ...

deposits were discovered in the area. During its height from 1864 to 1865 the town was home to 1,200 people. It also housed two hotels, three general stores, a Wells-Fargo office, a church and more than a dozen saloons. The Post Office was in operation from April 1862 to September 1868. The largest mine in the Star Mining District was the Sheba Mine, which produced about $5 million in silver by 1868. That same year the ore deposit began to run out. An 1868 account remarks on Star City: "So sudden was its decline that the daily mail, the express office and the telegraph office are all in operation yet, though the entire population consists of a single family." By 1871, only 78 people remained in Star City. Today the only reminders of the town are crumbling foundations and rusted mill equipment. A fictionalized version of Star City is used as the setting for the second half of the novel ''

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

'', by Imogen Binnie. The Star City of ''Nevada'', in contrast to the real-world ghost town, is home to a

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

where the character James works. A map Star City Overland Railroad stop] shown as "OSTAR CITY" on early Map of the Overland Railroad route for the Central Pacific Railroad references Star City on an early Map of the Overland Railroad route for the

Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North Americ ...

as "Ostar City," between Humboldt and Humboldt Wells, Nevada by mistake.

References

1861 establishments in Nevada Territory Ghost towns in Nevada Ghost towns in Pershing County, Nevada Nevada historical markers Mining communities in Nevada Populated places established in 1861 {{PershingCountyNV-geo-stub