Nevada's Oldest Active Courthouse, Built in 1876 on a Comstock Boomtown Block with a Documented 1877 Execution
26 B St, Virginia City, NV 89440
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The courthouse grounds and exterior are freely accessible. County offices are open to the public Monday through Friday during business hours. Ghost tours of Virginia City that include the courthouse are separately ticketed.
Access
Limited Access
Virginia City's steep C Street corridor; courthouse on B Street has some steps
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1876 · Nevada's Oldest Continuously Operating Courthouse · Comstock Lode Era Public Building · Unblindfolded Lady of Justice Statue · Italianate Architecture
Virginia City in the 1870s was one of the wealthiest urban concentrations in the American West. The Comstock Lode silver boom had funded mansions, opera houses, and newspapers in a mountain boomtown that briefly rivaled San Francisco in ambition. County government kept pace: when the fire of 1875 destroyed the original Storey County Courthouse, the county rebuilt in brick and Italianate grandeur.
Contractor Peter Burke completed the new courthouse in 1876 at a cost of $117,000 — a figure that made it the most expensive courthouse built in Nevada in the nineteenth century. The building was substantial enough to outlast the boom. When silver extraction slowed sharply in the 1880s and Virginia City's population collapsed from tens of thousands to a fraction of that, the courthouse remained in operation as county government contracted to match the reduced community.
The building's most talked-about feature is the Lady of Justice above the front entrance. The figure was manufactured in New York and installed in 1877. She is not blindfolded — an intentional design choice signaling, in the phrase of the period, that justice was not blind in Storey County. A handful of American courthouses made the same choice; the Virginia City figure is among the most cited.
The courthouse still houses county administrative offices: the Clerk Treasurer, Assessor, Comptroller, Recorder, County Manager, and County Commissioners. It is open Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. The old jail attached to the building operates separately as a county museum.
Sources
Peter Larkin's case played out in the courthouse in 1877. Charged with murder, Larkin was convicted in part on the testimony of his girlfriend — a detail that has shaped the legend ever since, framing his cries as a plea for a justice he felt was withheld. He was executed behind the courthouse. The year of the hanging corresponds to the same year the unblindfolded Lady of Justice was installed above the entrance, an irony that Virginia City ghost tour guides have not let pass unnoticed.
The paranormal claim attached to the courthouse is specific: Larkin's voice, described as cries or calls, is said to echo through the building. The Visit Reno Tahoe tourism authority includes this account in its coverage of Virginia City haunted sites, and the legend appears in multiple ghost tour itineraries.
The courthouse's context amplifies the claim's plausibility for dark tourism purposes: it is a nineteenth-century building that has operated continuously since the Comstock era, housing the full apparatus of county law enforcement through decades of mining violence, litigation, and death. The Larkin case is the single most documented paranormal anchor point, though ghost tour accounts also mention unnamed additional presences in the building.
Notable Entities
The 1876 Italianate brick courthouse is publicly accessible from the street. The unblindfolded Lady of Justice statue above the entrance — one of the few such figures in the country — is the most notable exterior feature. The building is the state's oldest continuously operating courthouse and appears on Virginia City's architectural walking tour.
US Ghost Adventures and other Virginia City ghost tour operators walk past the courthouse and recount the Peter Larkin hanging legend as part of their tour circuits.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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