 While in Silver City the highway crosses the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, now a heritage railroad that once served as a primary route to transport silver from the mines in Virginia City.This highway was the principal highway between Virginia City and Carson City and has been in use since the Comstock Lode of the 1860s.The highway has appeared on Nevada highway maps since at least as far back as 1919 and was first numbered part of Nevada State Route 17 (modern State Route 341) sometime in the 1920s.