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State Prison and Warm Springs near Carson City, 1866. Lawrence & Houseworth. Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication. Shown for period context; no photograph of the Washoe County poor house is known.
Forty Acres Near the Tannery: The Washoe County Poor House
In 1876 Washoe County bought forty acres near the Reno tannery for $1,000, capped the building at $3,500 against a real cost of nearly $6,000, and put up a poor... Read more...
Looking across Truckee Meadows toward the Sierra Nevada, near Central Pacific construction Camp 37, between 1865 and 1869. Alfred A. Hart. Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
The Glendale School: Nevada's Oldest Schoolhouse, Moved Twice
Built at the Truckee crossing in 1864 for $1,446, used as a school for ninety-four years, and moved twice by people trying to save it. Its first trustee was John... Read more...
Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada from Washoe City, 1866. Lawrence & Houseworth. Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
The Doctor With No First Name: Dr. S. Bishop and the Question Nobody Was Allowed to Answer
In May 1887 a witness at the Nevada asylum investigation was asked whether he had served on a grand jury at Washoe City twenty years earlier, in a matter concerning... Read more...
View near Verdi, Truckee River, between 1865 and 1869. Alfred A. Hart, photographer to the Central Pacific Railroad. Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
Crystal Peak: The Town That Lost Its Railroad, Then Its State
Crystal Peak is remembered as a gold camp that failed. Its own charter says otherwise: lumber first, mining last, and half the money raised in November 1863 went to timber... Read more...
Washoe City and Lake, from the west, 1866. Lawrence & Houseworth. Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
Washoe City: The Town That Beat Reno in Court and Lost Anyway
Washoe City was the first county seat of Washoe County, and the story of how it lost that seat to Reno is told wrong nearly everywhere. Reno won an election... Read more...
Truckee Meadows, Sierra Nevada Mountains 20 miles distant, between 1865 and 1869. Alfred A. Hart. Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
Jamison's Station: The First Business in the Truckee Meadows
Behind a locked fence inside the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility, where the river comes out of the canyon east of Sparks, there is about an acre of stone foundations... Read more...
A bus with MANOGUE HIGH on its destination board waits outside the former Flick Ranch mansion on Glendale Road, Reno, about 1950, when the house was the first Bishop Manogue High School. Cars of the period are parked along a white board fence.
The Pillars on McCarran: Eight Lives of the Flick Ranch
Driving east on McCarran Boulevard, just before the Truckee River, there are two squat concrete-block towers standing in the weeds on the south side of the road. They are capped... Read more...
The Nevada State Insane Asylum near Reno, photographed about 1900 from the south-east across its own farm fields, with the main brick building and its water tower against the Virginia Range.
The Asylum on Glendale: Nevada's State Hospital and the Graves Nobody Mapped
On a Saturday in April 1902 the Reno paper ran a column of short notes under the heading News of Street and Town too Brief for Headings. Between an item... Read more...
Stereograph no. 701, "Interior of English Co.'s Quartz Mill — near Reno," by Thomas Houseworth & Co., San Francisco: rows of circular amalgamating pans and settlers with wooden ladders inside the timber mill building at Auburn, Nevada.
Auburn: The Mill Town That Was Here Before Reno
There is a stereo card, printed in San Francisco and sold to people who wanted to see the West without going there, numbered 701. The caption under the twin photographs... Read more...
The Wedekind mines near Sparks, Nevada, circa 1900–1903: the mill and mine buildings with a lone figure standing in the sagebrush before them
Wedekind City: The Town You Never Knew in the Heart of Sparks, Nevada
A Reno piano dealer found silver five miles from town in 1900, banked $70,000 while the experts offered him $15,000, and sold out to the cattleman who became governor. Wedekind... Read more...
Washoe County Courthouse, Reno, Nevada, designed by Frederic DeLongchamps, 1909–1911, with its copper dome and Corinthian portico
Frederic DeLongchamps: The Mining Engineer Who Built Nevada
Nevada's only State Architect designed more than 500 buildings and nine courthouses, from the Washoe County Courthouse and the Riverside Hotel to the sandstone twins on Carson Street. The life... Read more...
Sanborn fire insurance map of Reno, Nevada, 1918, sheet 5: West Second Street, Commercial Row and Douglas Alley, Library of Congress
Under Reno: The Tunnels Beneath Downtown and the Buildings That Still Hide Them
A firsthand account of Reno's downtown tunnels, read against the fire-insurance maps and the buildings that still carry the marks: Fourth and Evans, South Virginia, the El Cortez block, and... Read more...