Chinese gold rush miners and railroad workers brought the practice of opium smoking to America's West Coast by the mid-nineteenth century. Among the Chinese on the Comstock, opium smoking was a common indulgence. Like many hallucinatory drugs, it provided a diversion from isolation, loneliness, dangerous working conditions, and the rising tide of anti-Chinese sentiment.

Nevada is known as a mining state due to its history of silver and gold mining, which began in the nineteenth century. However, the first miners in Nevada were Native Americans, starting perhaps more than 2000 years ago. Metals that were important in times that are more recent were not important to prehistoric miners, as there was no knowledge of smelting. Important minerals for mining included salt, turquoise, magnesite, and other minerals.

Mining technology consists of the tools, methods, and knowledge used to locate, extract, and process mineral and metal deposits in the earth. The methods used to locate ore bodies range from on-the-ground reconnaissance by prospectors to remote sensing techniques such as satellite imagery. Mine excavations take place either on the surface or underground.

One of the greatest challenges the mining industry faces is the extraction of resources from ore, the material that encases valuable minerals. This task follows the better known first phase of mining, the retrieval of ore from the surface or underground. During the nineteenth century, Nevada industrialists revolutionized the milling of gold and silver ore.