The Reno Arch: How a City Became the Biggest Little in the World

Stand at the foot of Virginia Street, where it climbs north from the Truckee River, and the sign arrives the way a headline does: RENO in lit letters, and beneath it the one line a city adopted as its own. The Reno Arch has spanned Virginia Street at Commercial Row in three forms since 1926, and the slogan it carries, “The Biggest Little City in the World,” has outlasted every version of the steel and bulbs behind it. It is the most photographed piece of signage in Nevada, and one of the few that began as an advertisement for a road.

The story runs through three arches and one durable slogan. The first went up in the autumn of 1926 to welcome a highway exposition; the slogan arrived in 1929 by public contest; neon, plastic, and LED eras followed in turn. Here is the order they came in, and where the oldest of them stands now.

The First Arch, 1926

The original arch was a steel span raised over Virginia Street at Commercial Row and dedicated on October 23, 1926. It cost $5,500, wore rows of incandescent bulbs, and carried a torch on either side of the word RENO. The occasion was the Nevada Transcontinental Highways Exposition, which opened in July 1927 to celebrate the completed Lincoln and Victory Highways, the roads that had at last tied Reno to both coasts. The dedication drew the governors of Nevada and California, Reno's mayor, and some fifteen hundred Shriners, the kind of crowd that tells you a town knew exactly what it was building.

The arch was meant to be an exposition banner. Reno's city council voted instead to keep it as the permanent gateway to downtown, and a temporary welcome became a civic monument. It marked the spot where highway traffic met the old railroad town, the same crossing that brought the era's travelers, divorce seekers, and gamblers up the same Virginia Street that the Mapes Hotel would later tower over.

The Slogan, 1929

For its first three years the arch had a name and no motto. In early 1929 Mayor E. E. Roberts asked residents to propose one. The first round of entries produced nothing worth lighting, so the city posted a $100 prize. The winner, announced on March 14, 1929, was G. A. Burns of Sacramento, with “Reno, The Biggest Little City in the World.” The words were lit across the arch that June.

It is a better line than it first appears. “Biggest” flatters, “Little” disarms, and together they claim size and charm in a single breath. The man who wrote it lived in Sacramento, over the Sierra, which makes it a thoroughly Nevada story: the city's most famous words were borrowed, and then kept.

Neon, Plastic, and Light Bulbs

In 1934 the city turned to neon and retired the slogan for a single word, RENO, in green tube. The public objected loudly. By 1935 the slogan was back in new Art Deco neon lettering, and the torches were gone for good.

In 1963 the original gave way to a larger arch built for Nevada's centennial: plastic panels, a rotating star, and an inverted arch hung beneath the lettering. A $100,000 fund drive paid for it, and it was lit in time for the New Year's Eve celebration of 1963 and 1964. On August 8, 1987, YESCO installed the third and current arch, and the plastic one traveled to Willits, California, where it still spans Main Street with new words, “Gateway to the Redwoods.”

The arch over Virginia Street today belongs to the city of Reno. In November 2009 its 2,076 incandescent bulbs were replaced with LEDs, and in 2018 the legs and lettering were repainted silver and blue, a change the city council approved by a single vote.

The Original Arch Today

The 1926 arch never went to scrap. After the 1963 replacement it moved to Idlewild Park and, in time, into the city's storage yard. In 1994 a film crew making Cobb, the Ty Cobb picture, restored it and raised it on East Fourth Street for four days of shooting. The city wanted it back after that, and in 1995 a grassroots effort reassembled it on Lake Street beside the National Automobile Museum, where it stands today.

That makes the arch you walk under on Virginia Street the 1987 one, and the Lake Street arch the 1926 original, the oldest of the line and the one that watched the city grow into its slogan. Both are worth a walk, and both are free.

At a Glance: The Reno Arch

• The first Reno Arch was dedicated on October 23, 1926, over Virginia Street at Commercial Row, for the 1927 Nevada Transcontinental Highways Exposition.
• It cost $5,500, wore incandescent bulbs, and carried a torch on each side of the word RENO.
• In 1929 G. A. Burns of Sacramento won a $100 contest with the slogan “Reno, The Biggest Little City in the World.”
• Green neon replaced the slogan in 1934; public protest brought it back in Art Deco neon by 1935.
• A larger plastic-panel arch with a rotating star replaced the original in 1963.
• The current arch, the third, was installed by YESCO on August 8, 1987, and is owned by the city of Reno.
• The 1926 original stands on Lake Street beside the National Automobile Museum, where it was reassembled in 1995.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the Reno Arch?

The current arch spans Virginia Street at Commercial Row in downtown Reno, just north of the Truckee River. The original 1926 arch stands a few blocks away on Lake Street, beside the National Automobile Museum.

Who wrote “The Biggest Little City in the World”?

G. A. Burns of Sacramento. He won a $100 slogan contest in 1929, and the words were lit on the arch that June.

How many Reno Arches have there been?

Three over Virginia Street: the steel arch of 1926, the larger plastic-panel arch of 1963, and the current arch of 1987. The 1934 and 1935 neon lettering was a change to the first arch, not a new one.

Is the arch on Virginia Street the original?

No. The original is the 1926 arch on Lake Street. The one over Virginia Street today was installed in 1987 and repainted silver and blue in 2018.

Conclusion

The Reno Arch has been rebuilt, rewired, repainted, and moved, and the city has never once stopped walking under it. A highway exposition made it, a Sacramento man's seven words named it, and a century of road-trippers photographed it until it became less a sign than a signature. It is still the fastest way to say where you are.

We love the objects a landmark like this leaves behind, and at The Eclection they tend to turn up beside the stories of the road that built it and the Mapes Hotel that rose beside it. To bring a piece of that era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points:

• Online Nevada Encyclopedia — articles on Nevada history, people, and places.
• Nevada Historical Society — the state museum and research library for Nevada history.
• Reno Historical — a community archive of historic photographs, maps, and stories from Reno and Washoe County.

Hero photograph: The Reno Arch over Virginia Street, by Sarah Stierch, licensed CC BY 4.0.