A day of celebration in Virginia City

The gray clouds didn't darken the spirits of the Americana Music Festival and Cinco de Mayo celebration in Virginia City on Saturday.

"We are taking advantage of the beautiful setting of Virginia City to bring in the types of music we love, which is bluegrass and blues primarily, and broaden the scope and call it an Americana festival," said Cindy Gray, director of the Nevada Bluegrass Project. "We done several of these down in Reno, and we are pleased we could bring it up here this year."

The Americana featured music workshops, musicians jamming with Civil War reenactors who were camped out downhill from C Street.

The weather forced them to scale back some of the events, such as the bluegrass petting zoo, a display of instruments where people can come up and touch and even play them. The group has a grant from the state to take the display to schools and other venues for children to touch and be touched by music.

The variety show at Piper's Opera House featured Mariachi Cazadores with folklorico dancers, the Del Williams bluegrass band, delta blues artist Chris Herald, Chris and Danita Bayer, and the Ragged Rogues Irish band.

"Americana is a term that describes all the different heritages and traditions that immigrants brought with them to America," Gray said. "We are trying every year to bring different threads of the American cloth together."

McAvoy Layne performed as Mark Twain during the variety show.

The Virginia City Cinco de Mayo celebration also took place at the same time, drawing crowds of people to the town's boardwalks.

It featured a chili cook-off sponsored by the International Chili Society, pinatas for the kids and live music by Trio Bosanova.

"We like to partner with other events, so there's people around who can attend both," Gray said.