Moundhouse

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 & 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 & Colorado, it turned Mound House into a booming shipping point.

The Southern Pacific Railroad purchased the C & C from the V & T 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 & C at Fort Churchill.  The Hazen cutoff took most of the booming Tonopah-Goldfield business away from the V & 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 & T track from Carson City to Virginia City in 1938.  Within a few years, Mound House had disappeared.

STATE HISTORICAL MARKER NO.  61

STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE

JULIA C. BULETTE CHAPTER

E. CLAMPUS VITUS