Virginia City’s Fourth Ward School

Historic school opens new Comstock Archives and Research Center.

STORY & PHOTOS BY ADAM ROBERTSON

Virginia City is one of the most historic places in Nevada—a bastion of the Old West in a modern age, residence of Mark Twain, resting place of the Suicide Table, location of the Comstock Lode, and home to the Fourth Ward School.

The school, opened in 1877 and operated until 1936, recently opened the Comstock Archive and Research Center—a collection of documents, maps, books, and memorabilia all pertaining to the Fourth Ward School and the history of the Comstock. Operation of the Archive and Research Center will work very much like similar collections.

“[The center will work like] the state Historical Societies, the library archives,” says Cindy Southerland, director of the Archive and Research Center, “where you come in, if you need help doing research [someone is there to help].”

Shelves of books containing documents and records of the
Comstock are available to researchers.

As you enter the school, you immediately head down a staircase, the old planks worn and warped from nearly 60 years of traffic by students and faculty. At the bottom, you turn into a classroom that was once the school’s home economics room. It still holds vestiges of its former life: a work station with a sink, stone slab, and plenty of workspace.

Across from it lies an old gas stove with two ranges and a glass-front, two-rack oven. By the entrance is a wall of wooden lockers, with notes scrawled by students long-since graduated. Though it wasn’t allowed at the time, after the school closed in 1936, many students returned to write their names or messages in the school and, in some places, these notes are carefully cleaned and painted around in order to preserve them.

In the middle of the room sits a long table filled with documents from the school’s heyday: diplomas, pictures, and newspaper clippings of sports teams and class photos, plus a copy of the rules to be followed by students and teachers—these are the start of the archives. The remainder of the documents are stored in a connecting room containing a vault—named the Purple Monkey for an anonymous donor who helped fund it—and a nearby storage room.

Documents of the Fourth Ward School laid out as an exhibit for
museum and archive visitors.

Originally, the plan was to have the archives focus solely on documents and records related to the Fourth Ward School. However, after some consideration, it was decided to expand the idea.

“We quickly realized that, up on the Comstock, we needed a place where people could come and find more information on more topics than just the Fourth Ward School,” Southerland says. “So we really expanded our mission statement; we expanded our collections. People can come in here now and start researching bonds, the mills, the railroad, and all the schools in the Comstock Historic District, including Gold Hill, Silver City, and Dayton.”

Over time, the collection has been organized into a database—part of which is to be made available to the public via computer. People will also be able to request help in doing research on documents and genealogy. The general public will not be allowed into the vault, however, and the full archive will only be available by appointment.

For more information about the Fourth Ward School museum, the Archive and Research Center, or to make a donation to the school, visit fourthwardschool.org.

Northwest Territorial Mint

After crossing the finish line of a marathon or other distance race, participants are bestowed a medal to commemorate their achievement—a symbol of the journey they made to reach the finish line. Although few runners consider it, those shiny pieces of metal underwent quite the journey to reach the finish line as well.

Many such medals and numerous other commemorative and honorary medallions start their journeys at Medallic Art Company and Northwest Territorial Mint in Dayton, the largest private mint in the country. A marathoner myself, I never considered the journey these baubles made to reach me; that is, until I had the chance to tour the mint recently.

Medallions, medals, coins, and the like start as ideas, which can vary from concepts, photos, and rough sketches to finished artwork. Medallic’s in-house artists take clients’ concepts and adapt them to work on the faces of a product.

First, a plaster model roughly three to four times the size of the finished product is made. From that an inverse of the model, called a die shell, is created. Die shells, which are still three to four times larger than the final medallion or coin, are then put onto special machines that reduce their size to create a die used to press the actual product. Coin and medallion blanks—such as the silver ones that are melted, poured, and formed onsite—are then pressed into form with up to 600 tons of pressure. Depending on their design, some coins and medallions have to be pressed, heated, and pressed again up to 12 times.

Some products are ready to be sent to the customer after the pressing is done, but for many, a series of treatments stand between them and their eager recipients. To give a medal or coin the appearance of higher relief, it is tarnished and then polished, leaving dark stain in the recesses while the raised parts are brought to a glossy shine. This process involves sandblasting, chemical baths, and detailed hand polishing. Although this is the final step for many of Medallic’s products, some receive a final treatment with the application of detailed colored enamels, all hand-painted by expert artists.

Born in the early 1900s in New York City, Medallic Art Company owes it existence to brothers Henri and Felix Weil and the reduction machine they brought from their native France. At the time, metal ornaments in the U.S. were typically cast (the earliest incarnation of Medallic was concerned primarily with creating trinkets to accent ladies’ purses), a process that did not lend itself to great detail in the art.

It was not until 1907 that the company made its first foray into medallions when the company was commissioned to create a medallion commemorating the centennial of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s birth.

The company would continue to grow in business and reputation through several moves and changes in ownership—including a merger with the Northwest Territorial Mint—until July 2009 when it moved to Dayton. Today, Medallic is Dayton’s largest private employer with more than 150 people on the payroll and room to grow.

Story by Charlie Johnston
Photos by Matthew B. Brown (see more photos here).