The Washoe Club

The Washoe Club, located in Virginia City, Nevada, is a historic saloon and museum renowned for its haunted past. Built in 1875, it served as a meeting place for the elite during the Comstock Lode era. Today, visitors can explore its three floors, including the crypt and spiral staircase, and participate in daily ghost tours or overnight investigations.

Planning your visit

Virginia City sat on the Comstock Lode, the silver strike of 1859 that funded San Francisco's growth and made a handful of men extraordinarily rich, and the Washoe Club was where they drank — a members' saloon built in 1875 for the mining elite, with a spiral staircase and rooms upstairs.

The building survives largely unaltered, which is the substance behind the ghost stories: original bar, staircase, and the so-called crypt where bodies were reportedly stored when the winter ground was too frozen for burial.

Daytime tours cover the Comstock history and the building; the operation leans heavily into the paranormal, with nightly ghost tours and overnight investigations, and the site has appeared on several American television programmes.

Visitors interested strictly in mining history will find the town itself, and the Chollar mine tour, more substantial.

Allow an hour. Current availability is listed below.