Winnemucca Valley Road Trip, Sutro Tunnel Update, & More
Winnemucca Valley Road Trip
A Sutro Tunnel Update
Jeff Nicholson Art Show in Elko
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Winnemucca Valley Road Trip
This road trip was inspired by the book Twenty Miles from a Match by Sarah Olds. It tells the story...
Sutro’s Tunnel Vision
Sutro’s Tunnel Vision
By David Moore
In the early 1860s Adolph Sutro, a 30-year-old Prussian who ran a cigar business in San Francisco, joined the rush to Virginia City and the Comstock Lode. Like most of...
Adding to Your Nevada Bookshelf
Ten years ago I wrote a piece about essential books for your Nevada Bookshelf. When I came across it recently and decided to update it, it occurred to me that because lots of likely...
150-Year-Old Locomotive Reno Returns to Virginia City
Most Famous Engine in Movie History, Star in 100+ Films
The most historic existing icon of Nevada’s past, the 150-year-old Virginia & Truckee Railroad steam locomotive Reno, has made its final run full circle, returning...
The Ghosts Have Nearly Gone
If I had a time machine, my first journey (after taking care of some personal business) would be to Goldfield. I'd set the chronometer to arrive on the morning of July 4, 1923. I'd...
Nevada Highway Patrol, 1972
I was driving north out of Carson City on a bitter cold night last February with a broken headlight and the fresh air vent jammed open, sipping at a can of beer when the...
Yank Van Duzen, Hero
by Harry Gorham
To return To the subject of ventilation — those men in Gould and Curry could not escape to a shaft a thousand feet deep or a tunnel 1500 feet long because the...
Mark Twain Couldn’t Take a Joke
“There were many practical jokers in the new Territory. I don’t take pleasure in expressing this fact, for I liked those people; but what I am saying is true. I wish I could say...
The Death of Indian Johnny
by David Toll
Now for some time travel. Buckle up, please.
While cleaning out an old building in Virginia City not so long ago, Winson Hong made a fascinating discovery. He found an advertising calendar from...
Edna Purviance: Nevada’s Forgotten Movie Star
Wholesome . . . Delectable . . . Enchanting
Watch Her Movies Here
by David Toll
You might think that a state with so few celebrities to brag about would make a big deal about a movie...
Silver City Guard Ambushes BiCentennial Wagon Train
by David Toll
b&w photos by Gary Elam (except as noted)
When it was announced that Nevada's Bicentennial Wagon Train would make its first stop at Silver City on its way to Valley Forge, local BiCentennial...
NevadaGram #223 – Butch Cassidy & the Great Winnemucca Bank Robbery
Winnemucca is a tranquil town on the Humboldt River, a trading post transformed by the railroad into a lively shipping center, a bumptious cow town and county seat. Its history resembles that of dozens...
Butch Cassidy and the Great Winnemucca Bank Robbery
Winnemucca is a tranquil town on the Humboldt River, a trading post transformed by the railroad into a lively shipping center, a bumptious cow town and county seat. Its history resembles that of dozens...
Mountain View Hotel, Pioche
The Mountain View Hotel of Old Pioche
by Dave Maxwell
Once as elegant a hotel as graced anywhere in the western states between San Francisco and Denver, the Mountain View Hotel in Pioche has fallen into...
Mark Twain’s Collar Buttons
by Dan De Quille
The Golden Era, December 6, 1863
If I had known that Mark Twain's shirts were all without collars I would never have gone into partnership with him in rooms. I should have...
The Famous Garcia World’s Fair Gold Medal Saddle from Elko
The book follows the journey of G.S. Garcia and J.M. Capriola, two legendary saddle makers in northeastern Nevada who made their living from the working cowboys and ranchers in the Great Basin. Entering into...
See the Wind and Catch it
Based on the true story that Ila Clements Davey (Godby) told me and I imagined it
by Alan Goya
There was a lot for a kid to do in Boulder City in the spring of 1935,...
Two Nevada Women in Paris’ ‘Belle Epoque’
"La Belle Epoque" in Paris Is defined as the period of social , economic, technological and political progress that took place from 1879-1914, and it's clear that our two Nevada girls contributed to it...
A Visit to Kingston
The best way to get to Kingston is by way of US 50 to Austin, then west down into the Reese River Valley a couple of miles and then south on the road marked...
The Evolution of Last Chance Joe
by Dick Dreiling
The original image of Last Chance Joe was designed in 1952 by Roscoe E. "Duke" Reading of Boise Idaho for Dick Graves.
NOW Available
at Your Local DMV Office!
The Last Chance Joe Charity License...
Corbett vs. Fitzsimmons, Carson City 1897
The dawn of battle day In Carson was all that could be desired by the several thousands of people who have traveled many miles to the snow-bound valley to see the great Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight.
Late...
Mark Twain’s First Letter
by Jim Reed
In signing his famous “letter from Carson City” on January 31, 1863, the man directing the pen morphed from Samuel Langhorne Clemens to Mark Twain with just a few wriggles of his...
Sparks: A Town of Two Times
by Wendell Huffman
Sparks was created in the early 20th century as part of the Union Pacific Railroad’s modernization of the Central Pacific line across Nevada. The old division point at Wadsworth, where trains were...
DAYTON is in Virginia City
by Dennis Cassinelli
For many years, my family and I have lived in Dayton, Nevada, “Gateway to the Comstock.” This is where Nevada gold was first discovered in 1849 that ten years later, led to...
Railroading in Nevada
This Is What a Transportation Revolution Looks Like
by Laura Bliss
To understand a true transportation revolution, I wanted to drive a coal-fired locomotive. On the Nevada Northern Railway, I found one.
Thick black smoke spewed from...
Corporal T.M. Murphy and the Battle of Tonka Tunnel
by David W. Toll
History books will tell you that the first American soldier to shed his blood in World War I was a lieutenant in the medical corps, wounded by a shell burst on July...
Las Vegas — Reality or Promoter’s Illusion?
by Myram Borders
Las Vegas rode into the 20th century on a horse-drawn wagon and left in a golden chariot.
Editor's Choice
After spending seven months late in 2013 and early 2014 writing more than half of...
Eulogy for a Gambler
The Funeral Oration for Riley Grannan
by Herman W. Knickerbocker
On April 3, 1908, a former Methodist minister faced a small audience crowded into a backroom dance hall in the booming mining town of Rawhide.
His name...
The Great Escape from Carson City, September 17, 1871
Volney Rollins checked his sidearm and buttoned his coat against a cold draft as he walked down the concrete hallway toward the dining area. His last duty was to secure the prisoners. It had...
Finding Clemens Cove
One of the most memorable episodes in "Roughing It" recounts how young Sam Clemens hiked up to Lake Tahoe from Carson City.
He tells how he and his companion staked a timber claim and...
Nevada’s Dead Towns
by John Muir (1875)
Nevada is one of the very youngest and wildest of the States; nevertheless it is already strewn with ruins that seem as gray and silent and time-worn as if the civilization...
A Brief History of Lincoln County
By Dave Maxwell
Visit Lincoln County this summer. It’s worth it. Part of Nevada’s Silver Trails Territory, it definitely fits that description.
In 1849, during the great Western migration, a party from Kansas seeking a...
The Horse Hunt That Spawned ‘The Misfits’
by Peter A. Kraemer
Here 's a photo (I assume by Gus Bundy) of A.J. "Joe"Liebling and Lucille Spectorsky with Lucius Beebe, Chuck Clegg and Katie Hilyard of "the Katies" in the doorway of the...
Betty’s Cards
Pick a Card from the Wall
by Sam Toll
I was born in Carson City Nevada in 1962 and grew up in Gold Hill. I spent my first 20 years on the Comstock Lode and at that time the...
Hal Bales, General Sales Manager – Cherry 8-3718
The first thing I looked at was the phone number. Pat and Betty took ownership of the Golden Gate Bar in the early 1950’s when the country was still calling with the numbering system...
The Lost Ski Lodge of the Rubies
"The Ruby Mountains in Northern Nevada weren't always packed with sleds, and the lot of cars full of folks looking to draw their line down Terminal Cancer."
Even prior to Carl Fischer's 1976 proposal to...
Boyhood Days in Winnemucca 1901-1910
by
James R. Chew
As a young boy, my family and I lived in Winnemucca's Chinatown on Baud Street. It had a population of about 400 Chinese, who were practically all railroad workers. Surprisingly, only four...
