There’s a reason Reno, Nevada, one of the original American boomtowns, has so many businesses with the word “silver” in their name. The history of Nevada aligns closely with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, an enormous silver ore deposit in Virginia City, near present-day Reno. (Nevada’s nickname is also the “Silver State.”) Fortunes rise and fall, of course, and Reno has cycled through different eras of changing fortunes in its 150-plus-year history.