The gold from Gold Canyon came from quartz veins, toward the head of the vein, in the vicinity of where Silver City and Gold Hill now stand. As the miners worked their way up the stream, they founded the town of Johntown on a plateau. In 1857, the Johntown miners found gold in Six-Mile Canyon, which is about five miles (8 km) north of Gold Canyon. The heads of both these canyons form the north and south ends of what is now known as the Comstock Lode, defined by the Ophir Discovery and the Gold Hill Discovery. The early placer miners never worked out the location of the placer gold, since the Lode surface structure was "largely worn away and covered with debris from the mountain sides above."