The Silver Queen Hotel: home of many ghosts and a lady with a silver dollar dress.

Silver Queen

Virginia City, Nevada

The Silver Queen Hotel in Virginia City was built in 1876 at the height of the town's silver-and-gold mining boom, and today is known for its many reported spirit manifestations. But while you might not see a ghost during your visit, you cannot miss the giant lady looming in the hotel bar.

Visitors with time to spare can count all 3,261 silver dollars.

Silver Queen is a ceiling-scraping portrait of a woman, 15 feet high and eight feet wide, inlaid with 3,261 silver dollars (A sign at the hotel entrance promises, "Real silver dollars in the Queen's dress"). 3,261 is also the vertical depth of the most rock-bottom Virginia City mine shaft, and some of the Silver Queen's coins no doubt include metal dug from right beneath her feet. Her belt is fashioned from 28 twenty-dollar gold pieces, and her various items of jewelry are made from silver quarters and dimes.

Visitors pose for snapshots in front of the Silver Queen. Kids count the coins.

Connie Carlson, current owner of the Silver Queen Hotel, told us the backstory of the painting. It is, she said, a portrait of Jerry Eaton, a previous owner of the hotel in partnership with her husband, Carroll. Silver Queen was painted in 1957 by another local businessman and colorful character, Bob Richards, who had painted signs for a living before becoming editor of Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise newspaper.

Carroll and Ruby Eaton pose in front of Silver Queen.

The portrait, which Connie has nicknamed "Tarnished Queen," may have initially flattered Jerry Eaton, but the good feelings didn't last. "I was there the day she shot herself," said Connie of Jerry. "With a shotgun; 1963. She was trying to get her husband's attention."

Metal-clad Silver Queen would be a danger on a dance floor.

According to Connie, Jerry's husband Carroll was having an affair with a local bank teller named Ruby. "She was after his money," said Connie of Ruby. "He married her within six months, and he died of a heart attack, so she got everything."

Old Silver Queen postcards show Carroll and Ruby, not Carroll and Jerry, posing in front of the Silver Queen painting, which couldn't have made Jerry -- who survived her shooting -- feel any better. But even though Ruby had sole control of the Silver Queen Hotel for years, she did not banish the portrait of her former rival, or dig out the Silver Queen's tempting treasure of silver and gold. Tourists today are grateful for that.