RENO, Nev. (AP) -- One hundred firefighters battled northern Nevada's first major wildfire of the season Thursday, a wind-driven brush fire that burned at least 75 acres in the foothills near the historic mining town of Virginia City.
No homes or other buildings were immediately threatened by the fire about 15 miles southeast of Reno, but fire officials warned that could change if strong, gusty winds changed direction.
''It is very windy,'' said Kat Gonzales-Liddicoat, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center in Minden.
The fire broke out about 2 p.m. just south of Virginia City along State Highway 341, a truck route that connects Silver City to Virginia City near the Lyon-Storey county line.
Two airtankers, a helicopter and 15 fire engines were on the scene and making good progress on the south and east flanks of the fire by 3 p.m., officials at the dispatch center said.
Winds in the area were out of the southwest at 30 mph. Gusts up to 80 miles per hour were recorded Thursday afternoon on the mountain tops near Mount Rose to the northwest of the fire.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, officials said.
Virginia City was the center of the Comstock mining boom in the 1860s. About three-fourths of the town burned in the great fire of 1875.
The entire mountain top town that sits at an elevation of 6,200 feet is a National Park Service National Historic Landmark. Samuel Clemens started writing there for the Territorial Enterprise in 1862 before taking his pen name, Mark Twain.