October 19, 2004

Dear Sir or Madam,

Having checked your web site, I am extremely disappointed.

As curator for the oldest and most culturally and spiritually significant attraction in Virginia City and as a senior tourism expert, I am surprised that you haven't included the church that Bishop "Paddy" Manogue founded after surviving the perils of three trips from western Europe around Cape Horn, South America, to the California Gold Fields and then working for twenty years, during the Silver Bonanza, at St. Mary's in the Mountains in Virginia City.

This Comstock Cathedral opened an expansive museum that any curator in the world would be proud of that houses 500 precious and semi-precious artifacts. Some are original oil paintings, precious metal ceremonial implements and spun gold vestments ranging back to 1737.

A block from the center of town, C Street, it also boasts of more parking availability, sometimes more precious than gold, than any other group of attractions in Virginia City.

For more information, please call me at 775.885.7004 or email at stmarysvc@earthlink.net

Thanks for your consideration.

Nick Nicosia

Curator, St. Mary's in the Mountains

"Mountain Museum", Virginia City, Nevada

PS:FAQs-��� St. Mary���s in the Mountains is truly the "Mother of all Catholic Churches in Nevada."

During a period that included a mass emigration to the New World and, specifically, the Gold Fields of California, together with the trauma of the Civil War, a period that consumed more human lives than any war in history, a church, a city and a state were born.

��� Inseminated by a progression of "Mountain Shepherds" (priests) and raised to the pinnacle of spiritual prominence by an Irish miner seeking the freedom to follow his catechism, deliver his brothers and sisters from religious repression under a foreign government and answer his calling to God, Father Manogue (later becoming the first Bishop of Sacramento, California) built, for what has been for almost 150 years, the most prominent edifice in the "wealthiest city in the world" and a place of worship for over 25,000 emigrated Irish and other Catholics from Western Europe.

��� At about 6,500 foot elevation, St. Mary���s in the Mountains has welcomed visitors from every continent to the place where the largest and most precious silver vein has ever been discovered on any continent in history. At its apex, Virginia City was populated by thirty to forty thousand hard rock miners whose lifestyle, while compensated by four to five times what the same labor in western Europe would pay, was devastatingly difficult. One day, every month, was declared a non-working day so that multiple processions could take place to remember and honor the miners who were killed during their labors in the previous month. Men and women toiled and lived without the benefits of electrical power, running water and other commodities currently taken for granted in this high desert sand and arid region. St. Mary���s in the mountains is well known for its annual Latin Masses, it���s Mountain Choir and the hundreds of precious and semi-precious artifacts that have accumulated for almost a century and a half, together with the folklore of Mark Twain and Lucius Beebe���s Territorial Enterprise newspaper and are on display to the millions of tourists who visit the "home of Hoss Cartright, Little Joe and the rest of the Bonanza family."

��� One of the most enduring qualities of St. Mary���s in the Mountains is the spontaneous sense of spirituality elicited by the ambiance and strength of its old world architecture. With the support of sixty foot redwood columns that were forged from the forests of the most beautiful alpine lake in the world, St. Mary���s roof and, especially the gleaming white steeple���s " Bells of St. Mary���s" have and do beckon Catholics and non-Catholics from every hill and valley in the world. Its acoustical qualities invite both liturgical and community concerts further emphasizing the Glory of God���s House. And, to further emphasize St. Mary���s in the Mountains endurance, while the Great Fire of 1875 literally destroyed all of Virginia City and much of the adjoining towns, including the churches of Gold Hill, (some of whose artifacts "live" in their memory and are on display in St. Mary���s in the Mountains free museum area,) Along with a series of 225 year old European Stations of the Cross, holy vestments made of spun gold thread as far back as 1737 and candelabra made of solid silver from Virginia City���s mines, Father Manogues��� stone block and brick House of God survived both the Great Fire and, a hundred years later, a concerted effort by a group of impassioned monks to eliminate all the beautiful, handcrafted balconies, choir lofts and altars that, with all due respect, were "too worldly" for their respective Order. Like the Phoenix, St. Mary���s was born to prominence and rose, again and again, from ashes and adversity so that this sanctuary would continue to champion a sense of worth and purpose, raising and expanding the umbrella of spirituality to the faithful for many, many more centuries,S�� an umbrella that would welcome the Great Fisherman (the Pope) in the glow of "Sun Mountain" or under the snowflakes that adorn the Comstock winters.