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Lode of silver ore in Virginia City, Nevada

[[File:Comstock Lode geologic map 2. jpg|thumb|300px|Comstock Lode geologic map, south. Gold Hill is in the center left; "dt" is diorite and "hI" is andesite. Hosea injured his foot and died of sepsis in 1857. In an effort to raise funds, Allen, accompanied by an associate, Richard Maurice Bucke, R. M. Bucke lived, but upon his recovery returned to his home in Canada. When Henry T. P. Comstock learned of the death of the Grosh brothers, he claimed the cabin and the lands as his own. He also examined the contents of the trunk but thought nothing of the documents as he was not an educated man. What he did know is that the gold and the silver ore samples were from the same vein. He continued to seek out diggings of local miners working in the area, as he knew the Grosh brothers' find was still unclaimed. Upon learning of a strike on Gold Hill which uncovered some bluish rock (silver ore), Comstock immediately filed for an unclaimed tract directly adjacent to this area.

Four miners discovered the Gold Hill outcropping, at the head of Gold Canyon, making placer claims after finding traces of gold on January 28, 1859. They were James Finney ("Old Virginny"; a contemporary rumor was that he changed his name from Fennimore to Finney after murdering a man), John Bishop ("Big French John"), Aleck Henderson, and Jack Yount. These claims were followed by claims from Lemuel S. "Sandy" Bowers (see Bowers Mansion), Joseph Plato, Henry Comstock, James Rogers, and William Knight. In the spring of 1859, after digging down to a depth of about ten feet, they found a gold rich reddish quartz vein. Their discovery was actually part of the Comstock Lode, the Old Red Ledge.

[[File:ComstockShafts. jpg|thumb|300px|North Comstock Lode ore bodies and claims: south (left) to north (right), Potosi, Chollar, Hale & Norcross, Savage, Gould & Curry, Best & Belcher, Con. Virginia, California, Ophir, Mexican, Union and Sierra Nevada, the last three not depicted.

Nevada is commonly called the "Silver State" because of the silver produced from the Comstock Lode. However, since 1878, Nevada has been a relatively minor silver producer, with most subsequent bonanzas consisting of more gold than silver. In 1900, Jim Butler discovered Nevada's second largest silver strike in Tonopah, Nevada. Nevada is currently ranked as the second largest producer of silver in the United States. Nevada's leading silver producer is the Rochester Mine in Pershing County. This mine ranks behind the Greens Creek mine in Alaska, the largest producer of silver in the US. According to Dan De Quille, a journalist of the period, "the discovery of silver undoubtedly deserves to rank in merit above the discovery of the gold mines of California, as it gives value to a much greater area of territory and furnishes employment to a much larger number of people". The latter quarter of the nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth employed miners and mining technology invented on the Comstock, throughout various other mining camps in the west. Deep underground, hard rock mining was a constantly evolving development for the miners and their companies, and the tactics developed on the Comstock became famous within the mining industry, worldwide. Two U. S. Navy ships have been named for the Comstock Lode. The first was the USS Comstock (LSD 19) which was launched in 1945 and the second is the USS Comstock (LSD 45) which was launched in 1988.

Four Irishmen, John William Mackay, James Graham Fair, James C. Flood and William S. O'Brien formed a business partnership in 1869 known as the "Bonanza Firm", which dealt in silver mining shares, and controlled and ran a number of Comstock mines over the years, notably the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company. These four men were among the "Bonanza Kings" or "Silver Kings" of the Comstock. William Chapman Ralston, founder of the Bank of California, financed several mining operations, repossessed some of those mines as their owners defaulted, and ultimately made enormous profits from the Comstock Lode. William Sharon, a business partner of Ralston, was the Nevada agent for the Bank of California, and acquired Ralston's assets when his financial empire collapsed. William Sharon became the second United States Senator from Nevada. In 1939 the arts section of the Federal Works Agency invited California artist Ejnar Hansen to create a mural for the newly completed post office building in Lovelock, Nevada, as part of the New Deal program. After a visit to the former mining town, Hansen chose the discovery of the lode as a suitable local subject, treating it in the style of modified realism favored by the Agency. Once his canvas was installed over an interior doorway, it was widely admired for its authenticity, especially by miners and prospectors with experience of the desert locale.

Bonanza season 1, episode 9 (1959), titled "The Henry Comstock Story", recounts a fanciful tale of Mr. Comstock, portraying him as a P. T. Barnum–like conman. In Deadwood season 2, various episodes (2005), several characters, including Whitney Ellsworth and Francis Wolcott, are portrayed as knowing one another from "The Comstock". Additionally, the Francis Wolcott character is portrayed as a mineralogist working for George Hearst.