Nevada’s Museums — What a Collection!
We’ve gathered glimpses of 60 of Nevada’s Museums to introduce a new section of our website devoted to these repositories of our history and culture.
The materials on exhibit vary widely, from Ichthyosaur fossils to Wagon Trains to atomic testing, for example.
These images are just to whet your appetite — not just to click the link below, but to make a visit.
Please visit our new Museums page and give us feedback
Editor’s Choice —
For Sale: An Off-the-Grid Castle Sitting on an Actual Gold Mine
by
THE SPRAWLING COMPOUND KNOWN AS the Hard Luck Mine Castle may be comfortable, but it is not for the faint of heart. But if you’re flush with cash and itching to ditch the noise, building restrictions, and nosy neighbors of civilization, maybe you’d like to be its next owner.
Deep in the Nevada desert, not far from Goldfield, the 22-room home looks like a citadel of concrete, glass, and steel. It sits on 40 acres of private land, and the beige, rocky views seem to stretch on forever, occasionally punctuated by a shaggy joshua or an ambling coyote.
Work Songs of the Cowboy Poets
by Jared Stanley
The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, now in its 35th year, draws thousands
of ranch workers and Western enthusiasts to this small city
It’s bright in Elko. The light is raw Nevada light. It pierces the eyes: Here, wide-brimmed hats are as much practical attire as they are fashion statements. The sun is a fact.
The surrounding hills are grass beige and winter sagebrush gray-green, with pale white drifts of snow in the lee of ridges. The austere reds, pinks and grays of coyote willow line the banks of the Humboldt River. Along Idaho Street, the combination of fine Great Basin dust and winter’s road salt collects on the sidewalk. It’s a still day — the storm comes in tonight — so the dust and salt gather in pockets along the curb instead of whirling around in middle of the street. The roadside grass is tawny and damp, pocked with cottonwood leaves and little pools of snowmelt.
There’s the steady rumble of truck traffic, both commercial and private. Some trucks bear the logos of Major Percussive and American Drilling Corp. It’s one of those occasional windless days in this desert city, a hub of mining and ranching (and gambling and prostitution) in northeastern Nevada. In the moments when the traffic subsides, it’s quiet, in that all-encompassing way the Great Basin is quiet. The air moves over ravens’ wings. The grackles chirp and warble in the bare trees overhead.
Best Food & Drink in Nevada
Many people come travel through our desert state to play the slots and see the shows, but what they really should be doing is eating! Whatever you’re craving, Nevada has it all.
At Truffles N Bacon Café, you can order a beasty burger that’s sure to give you great fuel for your Instagram feed and a likely stomachache. Made with an Angus beef patty, the Hot Beast is topped with pork belly, tater tots, serrano chile, Hot Cheetos, melted cheese, Korean mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, ranch dressing, and a sunny-side-up egg to finish off.
5 Years Ago in the NevadaGram
Shorty Visits Genoa
A Postcard from Shorty:
I went on the ramble to Genoa and had a nice time. I always enjoy our outings.
A lady from the state tourism office took my picture and asked a bunch of questions so she could write an article about me. Here it is. I can’t tell you how boring it is to be a celebrity. I want to yawn just thinking about it.
But we went to a real cool place for lunch! The Genoa Bar & Grill serves lunch outside, and that means I can find a spot under the table or near enough to nab the spills, and I always do well when I can focus my pleading gaze.
Also I’d give thumbs up to the Mormon Station State Park (if I had any thumbs) for its soft and yielding lawns. Always looking freshly prettied and so easy on the feet! Dogs are welcome as long as we’re properly leashed and picked up after. And I liked our stroll in the cemetery. I could smell dead people.
Tailwags, S H O R T Y
Update: Shorty went to Dog Heaven three years ago, but he will always be with us, both in our hearts and in the northwest corner of the garden.
Overheard at the Owl Club in Eureka “You can call me whatever names you want Phil, but as long as a man gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do, he is a success. You don’t do that, Phil, but I do.”
10 Years Ago in the NevadaGram
The old Nevada is slowly — and not so slowly — disappearing. It has been happening for many years, and it happens in big ways and small. In Reno and Las Vegas, landmark structures are being demolished. In Silver City a rock wall fell down.
Granted, both the Mapes Hotel in Reno and the Stardust on the Las Vegas Strip, the most recent landmarks to be scraped away, were beyond redemption as profit centers, and so they had to go. Generations of memories went with them.
That rock wall in Silver City is a more complicated case. It had been built more than a century and a half ago by two brothers from Pennsylvania, Allen and Hosea Grosch, who had come west as ’49ers.
Like their neighbors they built a rough cabin, dry-stacking rock against the wall of American Canyon. In 1856 they wrote home, “Native silver is found in Gold Cañon; it resembles thin sheet-lead broken very fine, and lead the miners suppose it to be.” Later they wrote, “One of these veins is a perfect monster.”
But before they could record or develop their claims, Hosea drove a pick through his foot and died of blood poisoning. Allen then struck out on foot for California, but was caught on the Sierra by winter snows and died of exposure.
Silver City attracted more than 1000 residents as it took form just uphill from the Grosh brothers’ crude cabin.
Long abandoned, it fell into disrepair. But through the brief, bright years of bonanza, and the century of borrasca that followed, the significance of the stacked rocks was forgotten. No plaque, no-one left to remember. Yet the wall remained intact.
Until last spring, when it tumbled down into a heap, and the last remaining handiwork of the men who located the Comstock Lode became just a meaningless jumble of rocks.
Around the state there are many historic treasures that are being protected, restored and revived. But at the mouth of American Canyon a big piece of our history was lost when that little wall came down.
15 Years Ago in the NevadaGram
How Canadians got their reputation as lousy tippers I don’t know, but McAvoy Layne who portrays Mark Twain during the Tahoe Queen’s afternoon cruise to Emerald Bay, tells me that the other day a pair of Canadiennes rode the shuttle bus from the free parking lot on Ski Run Blvd., and as they descended from the shuttle one of them tipped the driver with a cheery smile and two shiny nickels.
After the cruise they rode the shuttle back to their car, and as they debarked once again, the other woman reached for her purse. “No need,” said the first, “I took care of it on the way in.”
Yes! The MaryJane sisters are hitting the road again.“Our mission as usual is to seek out old and unusual saloons with a pool table and a jukebox, and meet people who can suggest interesting places for us to visit.”
[ More about the MaryJane Sisters in Winnemucca ]
“This is a result of the significant decline in European business which has represented 85% of our summer business over the last six summers at the Inn. However, you may be aware that for 70 years the Inn closed on Mother’s Day and reopened in the fall.
“All 224 rooms are available at the Ranch as well as restaurants, retail and the golf course.
“The other day someone drew my attention to a website purporting to offer Nevada travel information. When I visited the site, I found this information presented for ‘Northern Nevada’:Northern Nevada is a vast expanse of mostly unexplored desert terrain interrupted by stark and jagged mountain ranges.
The region is primarily comprised of the high desert of the Great Basin.
Few of the cities in the north are well known. Carson City, the state capital at the foot of the Cascade Mountains, is technically in the northern part of the state, though just at the southern edge.
Coming down the Cascades from Lake Tahoe traveling northeast the I-80 first passes through the city of Winnemucca, then Battle Mountain, followed by Elko and then Wells. Perhaps the most notable attraction in the area is Ruby Lake in Humboldt National Forest. This region is popular with rugged outdoor types, who like to explore the harsh and unforgiving desert wilderness.”
“After I stopped laughing I got mad and fired off a note. “I am rendered nearly speechless by the wildly inaccurate info you are publishing about northern Nevada,” I fumed. “The overall impression is of profound, abysmal ignorance.A reply came the same afternoon, offering me the opportunity to rewrite the text for them gratis. “Neither [my copywriter] nor I have been to Northern Nevada making it that much more difficult to accurately describe.”
Bummers. But the skiing is great in the stark and jagged Cascades!
Parting Shot —
End of the Trail by Pauline Cimoch
