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    Uncovering Nevada's Past: A Primary Source History of the Silver State
    Uncovering Nevada's Past: A Primary Source History of the Silver State
    Uncovering Nevada's Past: A Primary Source History of the Silver State
    Ebook362 pages7 hours

    Uncovering Nevada's Past: A Primary Source History of the Silver State

    By John B. Reid and Ronald M. James

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    Nevada’s relatively brief history has been nonetheless remarkably eventful. From the activities of the first Euro-American explorers to the booms and busts of the mining industry, from the struggles and artistry of the Native Americans to the establishment of liberal divorce laws and such unique industries as legalized gambling and prostitution, from Cold War atomic tests to the civil rights movement, from the arrival of a diverse and rapidly growing urban population to the Sagebrush Rebellion, Nevada has played a part in the nation’s development while following its own ruggedly independent path. In Uncovering Nevada’s Past, historians John B. Reid and Ronald M. James have collected more than fifty major documents and visual images—some never before published—that define Nevada’s colorful and complex development. Here are the words of such literary luminaries as Mark Twain, Sarah Winnemucca, and Arthur Miller; anonymous newspaper articles; public documents including Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of Nevada statehood and the probate records of murdered Virginia City prostitute Julia Bulette; personal letters; political speeches; and personal accounts of, among other subjects, the construction of Hoover Dam, life in a mining boomtown, racial segregation in Las Vegas, political careers, and atomic testing. Images include photographs of significant Nevada architecture, the masterpieces of renowned Paiute basketmaker Dat-so-la-lee, tree carvings by Basque sheepherders, and tourism promotions. The collection ranges from the earliest descriptions of the region to the current debate on Yucca Mountain. The volume editors have provided an introduction and headnotes that set the documents into their historical and social context. Uncovering Nevada’s Past is a vital, enlightening record of Nevada’s history—in the words of the people who lived and made it—that makes for lively and engaging reading.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Nevada Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2004
    ISBN9780874176506
    Uncovering Nevada's Past: A Primary Source History of the Silver State

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      Uncovering Nevada's Past - John B. Reid

      1

      The Physical Environment

      A Computer-Enhanced Map of Nevada Geography

      Is Nevada's geography a blessing or a curse? For twenty-first-century Nevadans, it is a benefit, without question. The sunny and temperate climate has attracted vacationers, retirees, and others for the last half century. The warm winters in Las Vegas are central to its status as a resort area, and the snowy Sierra Nevada in the winter attracts skiers from around the world. Beautiful Lake Tahoe provides year-round recreation for Nevadans and visitors. However, for nineteenth-century explorers, emigrants, and settlers this positive view of Nevada's geography would have been incomprehensible. The mountains that provide such beauty and recreation today were extraordinary obstacles before railroads and automobiles. The north/south orientation of Nevada's mountain ranges made the journey from the Great Salt Lake to California extraordinarily difficult, and the fact that Nevada's rivers do not drain to the sea prevented water travel as an alternative. The enhanced topographical image included here provides a perspective on Nevada's geography that was unimaginable to early emigrants to the state. If they had seen this image, would they have made the trip?

      —John B. Reid

      Mark Twain on Nevada's Harsh Land

      Who would stay in such a region one moment longer than he must? I thought I had seen barrenness before…but I was green. …Here, on the Humboldt, famine sits enthroned, and waves his scepter over a dominion expressly made for him. …There can never be any considerable settlement here.

      These are strange words indeed for Horace Greeley (1811–72), the famous nineteenth-century journalist who made Go West, young man a national slogan. While he encouraged those seeking opportunity to turn their eyes to an undeveloped frontier, he saw little to recommend the Great Basin to settlers. The same was true for many others who headed to the Pacific Coast in search of cheap land, easy gains, and a temperate climate.

      When young Samuel Clemens came west in 1861 with his brother Orion, newly appointed as secretary-treasurer for the Nevada Territory, he found the region shocking in its severity. The following is an excerpt from Roughing It (1871), his account of his Nevada sojourn.

      —Ronald M. James

      My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of Mr. Secretary, gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away from home, and that word travel had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and maybe get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about on an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and the ocean and the isthmus as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My contentment was complete. At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago—not a single rail of it.

      I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years!

      I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a steamboat bound up the Missouri River. …

      [After an eventful trip through the American West, Twain and his fellow travelers approached Nevada Territory's capital city.]

      We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of Nevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a standstill and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was not agreeable, but on the contrary depressing.

      Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but the endless sagebrush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We were plowing through great depths of powdery alkali dust that rose in thick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning house. We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the mail-bags, the driver—we and the sagebrush and the other scenery were all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight-wagons in the distance enveloped in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw. Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence, and desolation. Every twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast of burden, with its dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs. Frequently a solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplated the passing coach with meditative serenity.

      By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of mountains overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of companionship and consciousness of earthly things.

      We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a wooden town; its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four or five blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit down on, but not too high for various other purposes; in fact, hardly high enough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were scarce in that mighty plain. The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined to rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, was the plaza, which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains—a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty pole in it, and very useful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass-meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the plaza were faced by stores, offices, and stables. The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering. …

      This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, now, and according to custom the daily Washoe Zephyr set in; a soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view. Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting to newcomers; for the vast dust-cloud was thickly freckled with things strange to the upper air—things living and dead, that flitted hither and thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling billows of dust—hats, chickens, and parasols sailing in the remote heavens; blankets, tin signs, sagebrush, and shingles a shade lower; door-mats and buffalo-robes lower still; shovels and coal-scuttles on the next grade; glass doors, cats, and little children on the next; disrupted lumber yards, light buggies, and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating roofs and vacant lots.

      It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have kept the dust out of my eyes.

      But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones like sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills the passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people there, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a

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