by Susan McReynolds

he road to Virginia City, Nevada, is anything but romantic. A short trip from either Carson City or Reno past strip malls and drive-through pawnshops leads you to the modestly marked turnoff to Route 341. Winding slowly up the twisting miles past once crowded ghost towns with names like Silver City and Gold Hill, you wonder about the men and women who came before you — men and women like John Mackay and Marie Louise Antoinette Bryant, who would become the Prince Charming and Cinderella of the Wild West.

“… Prince Charming and Cinderella of the Wild West.”

Born in Dublin, Ireland, John Mackay immigrated in 1840, first to New York, then to the gold fields of California. In 1859 he headed for a rumored silver strike in Nevada. But not before he had set rapturous eyes on the town beauty, Marie Louise Antoinette Hungerford.

Daughter of Major Daniel E. Hungerford, Marie was a great beauty by age fifteen. Glowing eyes and clouds of dark hair framed a face that can only be described as classical perfection. She was married at age sixteen to Dr. Edmund Gardener Bryant, a fortune-seeking charlatan who ended up dragging her from mining camp to mining camp hawking alcohol-based “remedies.” He finally ended up abandoning her in Virginia City, and later overdosed on the drugs he was supposedly learning to compound.

Marie Louise’s life was at a desperate low. Widowed, living in a shack at the edge of town, she barely fed her young daughter by teaching French lessons.

John Mackay, on the other hand, had risen to a position of prominence in the teeming metropolis of Virginia City. Always a philanthropist, he was known to call on widows to offer financial assistance, so naturally friends mentioned Marie Louise Bryant’s plight. John rushed to her shack, she opened the door, and the rest, as they say, is history.

John and Marie Louise had been married at least four years when they moved into what is now known as the Mackay Mansion. The front parlor served as the mining office for Mackay’s Big Bonanza. Ten million dollars in silver bullion was kept in reserve in the office vault at all times. But the rest of the four-story house clearly shows Marie Louise’s touch. The original gilded wallpaper rings the ceilings. Many of the muted velvets and satins are still on display. Marie Louise’s silver service, created by Tiffany’s from more than a half ton of silver, is now on display at the University of Nevada, but the plumbing is still here. Up the steep and narrow winding staircase in the bedroom wing is the first indoor toilet west of the Mississippi. The commode was hand-painted and imported from France. Only the finest would do. The Mackays were quite the characters.

And speaking of characters, the mansion’s tour guide, Margaret Garner, is a jewel beyond price. Listen patiently as she offers her usual introduction, tour the mansion, then come back and sit and chat with her in the cool of the front porch. Margaret knows just about everything there is to know about the fantastic Mackay clan. But then that’s another story.

Mackay Mansion: tel. 775/826-3934; www.mackaymansion.com.

Susan McReynolds is a freelance travel writer based in Berkeley, California.

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