A mile west of Virginia City along Alder Gulch, Nevada City is an open-air museum assembled from historic frontier structures relocated from across Montana. The collection includes a Chinese laundry, a one-room schoolhouse, a music hall, miners' cabins, a hotel, and various outbuildings — the full repertoire of what a gold rush settlement looked like at its height. The Alder Gulch Short Line steam train connects the two towns in summer, and many visitors do both in a single day.
The Nevada City Music Hall is a particular draw. It holds a large collection of mechanical musical instruments — nickelodeons, orchestrions, band organs — that visitors can hear played on demonstration. The collection is one of the largest of its kind in the American West. The combination of the mechanical music, the period buildings, and the dramatic gulch setting makes Nevada City a more evocative stop than it might appear on paper.