what crop was known as virginia's gold and silver
tobacco
title: Virginia City, Nevada text: discoveries. By 1876 Nevada produced over half of all the precious metals in the United States. The Comstock produced silver and gold ore valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. The wealth supported the Northern cause during the American Civil War and flooded the world monetary markets, resulting in economic changes. Virginia City's silver ore discoveries were not part of the California Gold Rush, which occurred 10 years before. At the time of the discovery of the Comstock Lode, silver was considered the monetary equal of gold, and all production was purchased by the federal government for use in coinage. title: Gold mining in Virginia text: gold production as a non-essential and directed all but the smallest of gold mines to shut down so their labor force could be used elsewhere to support the war effort. Economic conditions following the war were such that few miners returned to mining, so only a handful of mines reopened. For all practical purposes, commercial gold production in Virginia ceased after 1948. At its peak, Virginia was the third largest gold producing state, and the heart of the gold production area was at the junction of Spotsylvania, Culpeper, Greene near Wood Dr., and Orange counties near Wilderness. More than 300 title: Colony of Virginia text: be renamed Williamsburg. The capital of Virginia remained in Williamsburg, until it was moved further inland to Richmond in 1779 during the American Revolution. The entrepreneurs of the Virginia Company experimented with a number of means of making the colony profitable. The orders sent with the first colonists instructed that they search for precious metals (specifically gold). While no gold was found, various products were sent back, including pitch and clapboard. In 1608, early attempts were made at breaking the Continental hold on glassmaking through the creation of a glassworks. In 1619, the colonist built the first ironworks in North title: Gold mining in Virginia text: Gold mining in Virginia Most gold mining in Virginia was concentrated in the Virginia Gold-Pyrite belt in a line that runs northeast to southwest through the counties of Fairfax, Prince William, Stafford, Fauquier, Culpeper, Spotsylvania, Orange, Louisa, Fluvanna, Goochland, Cumberland, and Buckingham. Some gold was also mined in Halifax, Floyd, and Patrick counties. The earliest recording of gold mining activity in Virginia began about 1804 as placer mining, followed quickly by lode mining. Mining continued unabated until the onset of the California Gold Rush, at which point most serious speculators moved west. Production continued at a low level until the title: Gold mining in Virginia text: Civil War, when it virtually ground to a halt. Near the end of the war, Union troops began a systematic campaign to destroy the economic base of the South. Many gold mines were subsequently damaged beyond repair. Most were, by this time, marginal producers, their ores of such low concentrate as to stretch the limits of the mercury amalgam (chemistry) recovery technology of the day. Many of these mines never reopened. Other mines did, however, and gold production in Virginia continued until World War II, when, on October 8, 1942, the War Production Board issued Limitation Order L-208, which branded