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Reno, the Commercial Center of Nevada, 1907 bird's-eye view of the city drawn by Grafton Tyler Brown, Library of Congress
The Masonic Hall on Commercial Row: Reno's Oldest Building and the Box in the Cornerstone
Reno's oldest commercial building: the 1872 Masonic Hall and Reno Mercantile at 98 West Commercial Row, the lead box sealed in its cornerstone, the 1879 fire, and the 2018 demolition... Read more...
Bowers Mansion in Washoe Valley, Nevada, photographed by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration in March 1940
Eilley Bowers, the Washoe Seeress: The Fortune in the Glass
A Scottish washerwoman who read Comstock stocks in a piece of glass, married the richest ten feet of ground in Nevada, built Bowers Mansion, and lost it all at a... Read more...
Photograph of Grantsville, Nevada in 1886, showing the town spread across the canyon mouth in the Shoshone Range
Grantsville, Nevada: The Ore the First Company Missed
Founded on a promoter's exaggeration in 1863, abandoned for a decade, then revived in 1877 when two men drove the old tunnel a little farther. The story of Grantsville, the... Read more...
Stone ruin of the Wells Fargo bank building at the Treasure Hill silver-mining ghost town, White Pine County, Nevada, with Pogonip Ridge beyond
Treasure City, Nevada: Silver You Could Cut With a Knife
At 9,000 feet with no water, Treasure City sat on top of the richest silver pocket in eastern Nevada. The story of the 1868-69 White Pine rush, the Eberhardt mine,... Read more...
The Ione Road leaving Ione, Nevada, looking across the Paradise Range country where the Ellsworth ghost town lies
Ellsworth, Nevada: The Silver Camp in the Paradise Range
Silver found in 1863, a ten-stamp mill boom in 1870, a post office that closed in 1884, and sixty more years of men walking back up the canyon. The story... Read more...
The mining camp of Wonder, Nevada, in 1907.
Wonder, Nevada: The Silver Boomtown of the Second Rush
Wonder, Nevada boomed on a 1906 silver strike east of Fallon, produced millions through the Nevada Wonder mill, and faded by 1920. Its history and the ghost town today. Read more...
Sand Mountain, a large sand dune in the Nevada desert east of Fallon.
The Le Beau Sisters: Pioneer Graves on the Salt Flat at Sand Mountain
Three children's graves sit on a salt flat east of Fallon, at the foot of Sand Mountain — the haunting, disputed story of the Le Beau sisters and the strangers... Read more...
A Hoosier Glass pressed-glass spiral bud vase.
Hoosier Glass and the Glassmakers of Indiana: How to Tell Old Glass from New
What Hoosier Glass vases really are, the Indiana gas-boom glass industry that made them, and how to tell antique glass from mid-century and newer pieces. Read more...
A Virginia & Truckee Railroad steam locomotive at Carson City in 1878.
The Virginia & Truckee Railroad in Carson City: The Comstock Line Beneath the Combs Canyon Trail
The Virginia & Truckee Railroad carried Comstock silver through Carson City — and its 1872 grade still runs beneath the Combs Canyon trail on the north side of town. Read more...
The sandstone Carson City Mint in Carson City, Nevada, shown in a photograph from about 1879, in the public domain.
The Carson City Mint and CC Silver: Comstock Metal, Struck in Nevada
Turn a Morgan silver dollar over and look beneath the wreath. Two small letters, CC, mark a coin struck in Carson City, Nevada, at the branch of the U.S. Mint... Read more...
Portrait photograph of George Wingfield in 1910, in his mid-thirties, shortly after he moved to Reno.
George Wingfield: The Man Who Ran Nevada
For a quarter century, the most powerful man in Nevada never sat in the governor's chair or the Senate. George Wingfield (1876–1959) was a cattle-drive hand turned faro dealer who... Read more...
The Washoe County Courthouse on Virginia Street in Reno, its copper dome and Corinthian portico rising above the street, photographed by Visitor7 (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Washoe County Courthouse, Reno: DeLongchamps' Domed Divorce Courthouse
Just south of the Truckee River, where Virginia Street meets Court, a ribbed copper dome rises over a portico of Corinthian columns. This is the Washoe County Courthouse, a Classical... Read more...