The Nevada State Museum occupies the original Carson City Mint building, a substantial Greek Revival structure that was built to process the enormous silver output of the Comstock Lode in the 1870s. The building itself is the first exhibit: the thick walls, the industrial-scale basement coin production floor, and the vault spaces give a physical sense of what it meant to be a government mint at the height of the silver rush. The original coin presses are preserved and occasionally demonstrated.
The museum's collections range well beyond coins and minting history. There are substantial exhibits on Nevada's natural history — including a full woolly mammoth skeleton excavated locally — as well as on Great Basin Native American cultures, the state's geological formation, and the development of Nevada through the 19th and 20th centuries. The ghost town exhibit in the basement, depicting a section of a period Nevada mining town, is more evocative than it sounds. Allow two to three hours for a proper visit; this is one of the better state museums in the region and the building deserves as much attention as the collections inside it.