Bonanza started each week with a map on screen, and that was probably the best thing about that TV show. Not just any map, but an idiosyncratic depiction of the Cartwrights’ vast ranch Ponderosa, which straddled Lake Tahoe at some inexact moment in the 19th century.

Set illustrator Robert Temple Ayres (d. 2012) designed the original, “Map to Illustrate the Ponderosa in Nevada,” in 1959. I wasn’t a regular watcher of Bonanza, either in prime time or afternoon repeats, but I did know that map.

That show might have been the first time I ever heard of Virginia City, Nevada, which is featured prominently on the map, toward to top, because it is more-or-less oriented with the east to the top. Maybe Ayres was trying to tell us all something about the importance of Jerusalem. More likely, he needed to fit the map on horizontal TV screens.

Also, if I remember right, the Cartwrights were always going to town — to Virginia City — for one reason or another. After leaving Carson City on October 3 to return to Reno, I decided to go by way of Virginia City myself, which is on Nevada 341. The drive climbs into the Virginia Range, and the city sits on what used to be the Comstock Lode.

At less than 800 residents, the city is a town, nothing like its silver boom heyday in the 1870s, when there was a population of more than 25,000. The town you see now mostly dates from after 1875, when the original V. City burned down.

Local boosters haven’t forgotten that a young Samuel Clemens lived here for a while.

The main street is C Street.

You can stroll down C Street and visit the likes of the Fourth Ward School Museum, Cafe Del Rio, Virginia City Jerky, Wild Horse Gallery, Comstock Firemen’s Museum, Tahoe House (a hotel), Washoe Club Museum & Saloon, Garters and Bloomers, Grant’s General Store, Virginia City Mercantile, Red’s Old Fashioned Candies, Comstock Bandido (clothes), Palace Restaurant & Saloon, Silver Queen (another hotel), Bucket of Blood Saloon, Priscilla Pennyworth’s Emporium, Red Dog Saloon, The Way It Was Museum, Buzzard Creek Collectibles and much more.

The name of this place was particularly apt.

I hadn’t come to Virginia City to shop. Rather, I sought out St. Mary’s in the Mountains Catholic Church on E Street. Considering that the town is built on the side of a slope, it was a walk downhill to get there.

Completed in 1870 and rebuilt after the fire in ’75. I was glad to find it still open for the day.

Nearby is the more modest St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. It wasn’t open.

Nice view from next to the church, though. Note the gazebo. What was it Mark Twain said about gazebos? They’re the mark of civilization, even in rough-and-tumble Nevada? Well, maybe he didn’t say that.

Soon I visited Silver Terrace Cemetery, which is on the edge of town. You don’t have to go far to get there, but it is a bit of a walk once you’re at the entrance.

Worth the effort. Finally, a cemetery with a distinctive local name. I’m glad its organizers didn’t pick Greenwood or Woodland or something else completely at odds with Nevada geography.

Not a lot of large memorials, or many trees, but the place has character. And some contour.

“Very few of the adults entombed here are native to Nevada, which offers a window into the cultural melting pot that was drawn to the glamour of the largest silver strike in U.S. history,” Travel Nevada notes. Glamour? More likely, they wanted to get rich.

“Most of who worked the Comstock were immigrants… nobody famous is buried here, just those who devoted their lives to developing Comstock Lode.”