If the good Lord sees fit to shake the earth beneath Virginia City sometime soon, St. Mary in the Mountains might tumble down the hill like a wheel of cheddar from a drunken festival, and it won’t be His fault—it’ll be ours.
St. Mary, the grand old Catholic church perched like a watchful aunt on E Street, has bricks crumbling faster than a card cheat caught mid-deal. Cracks in the outer walls gape wide enough for a respectable-sized cat to slip through.
And inside? It’s leaking like a politician’s promise—stains on the sanctuary ceiling, puddles under the pews, and enough dampness to make a trout feel perfectly at home.
Caretaker Tim Roth, who started by running the gift shop over a decade ago and stuck around like a man who came in for coffee and ended up managing the saloon, says the place stirs the soul. “It affects people,” Roth said, eyes glistening like a bishop’s ring. “I get folks who come in and leave in tears.”
And not from the mildew either—though that’d be understandable.
St. Mary’s bones go back to the 1860s when Father Patrick Manogue—Irish miner turned priest—figured a town of drunken roughnecks and raucous miners needed salvation more than silver. The first church stood proud until the Great Fire of 1875 tried to send it back to the heavens in a pillar of smoke. It’s told the townsfolk tried to blow the roof off to save it—an idea born of whiskey and desperation—but the stone skeleton stayed put, and they rebuilt atop the old foundation like a phoenix risen but with smoke-stained feathers.
Now, nearly 150 years later, the old gal’s showing her age and not kindly.
Jacob Arndt, a masonry man from Wisconsin—where folks know a thing or two about stone and stubbornness—came west to take a peek.
What he found was a mess worthy of Biblical lament. The mortar used in past restorations, he says, was as wrong for the building as a tuxedo on a mule.
Too hard, too brittle, and modern as tomorrow’s newspaper, it’s done more harm than good.
“It’s a disaster,” Arndt said, shaking his head like a man who’s watched a butter churn get used for making dynamite. “You can’t just slap modern mortar on historic stone and expect it to behave. That’s like feeding a steamboat coal dust and calling it progress.”
And so the bricks crack. The foundation shifts. The water creeps in like a lazy outlaw, ruining everything, slowly and quietly.
Roth, who’s grown as protective of the church as a mother bear with her cub, now spends his days chucking inferior stone and salvaging what the Lord—and the original builders—intended. He’s squirreling away the old bits, marking where they belong like a man planning a puzzle two decades into the future.
The problem, according to Arndt, is that real experts are rare as hen’s teeth and twice as quiet.
“It’s an endemic problem,” he said, using words fancier than most buildings he’s tasked with saving. “Restoration’s a trade, not a hobby. And nobody’s enforcing the rules, even though they’re written down clear as scripture.”
It’s not that folks don’t care—plenty of volunteers lend a hand and a prayer. Donations often go to keeping the church warm in winter rather than upright in spring. To give directly to restoration, you’ve got to ask—or go to stmarysvc.org, where your dollars can do more than heat pew cushions.
And if you’ve never ventured off C Street, Roth wants you to know–you’re missing a cathedral carved out of time. A place so holy even the ghosts kneel at the altar.
So, if you’ve got a mind for beauty, a hand for stone, or a wallet with something to spare, consider doing your part. Because if we let this church fall, it won’t be fire or flood that did it—it’ll be forgetfulness.
And that, dear reader, would be the real tragedy.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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