A traveler's impressions of Carson City: 1870-73

Editor's note: The following is the second excerpt from the book "Little sheaves: gathered while gleaning after reapers. Being letters of travel commencing in 1870, and ending in 1873" by Caroline M. Churchill. The passage was located by Fred Nietz, a member of the Carson City Sesquicentennial Committee. The first excerpt appeared in last Sunday's Appeal.

"Carson passed quietly through the firey ordeal of celebrating the nation's birthday. The explosion at Virginia City spread a feeling of quiet sadness over the community. Few guns were fired; and but few of those explosive abominations - fire crackers - were heard throughout the day.

Old Abe Curry's ball was a success [held in one of the "spacious rooms of the new railroad structure, fine buildings, I assure you"]. This was about the only thing done to celebrate the Fourth in Carson. The day was very warm and still, there being only a sufficient breeze to keep the stars and stripes flying. There was much drinking among a certain class of voters, and occasionally a fight occurred, just to show that there is fighting material still left in the United States of Hamerica.

Carson has a whirligig for children; this is managed by men, and turned by horse power; is covered with canvass like a tent, and makes a pleasant and safe place for juveniles during school vacation. There are seated boxes which answer for carriages, and wooden horses with bridles, fierce, terrible looking steeds, so that persons can ride on horseback or in a carriage, in a fine procession going swiftly around without the jar of a real vehicle. This city is soon to have another newspaper published by R. R. Parkinson, the first issue will make its advent on Monday, the 14th of July.

The weather in Carson resembles that of early spring or Autumn of a more northern climate. Although it is June, a summer month, the air is very cool; some days the sky is overcast with clouds, but like the shrew, they threaten what they never intend to perform, for it is so arranged by the clerk of the weather as to never rain here in Summer. There is not a people living who have a better appreciation of fine weather than the Carsonites. If the sun shines a few hours in the morning and the elements remain placid till noonday, everybody seems happy and ready to greet others with one accord in regard to this all-important topic. I do not feel bitter towards this people because of their peculiar climate; on the contrary, give them credit for much philosophical forbearance and constitutional endurance. Everybody keeps remarkably healthy, notwithstanding the unpleasant agitation of the elements (which may be conducive to health) and the uncleanly condition of the streets. The latter I am sure agrees with one portion of the domestic institution, namely, the pigs. They claim a stamping ground near my lodgings, which remind me of the Chicago stock yards. These creatures are numerous, fat and happy. They live in the center of civilation, move in respectable society, bathe in the chemical waters, recline upon down beds; what more could the most exacting pig require, even at the hands of the great animal defender, Bergh?

Carson City is not properly named. This place should have had one of those good old English names, either Windchester or Windham. There would have been a shadow of appropriateness in such naming; as it is, Carson means nothing, unless it be the hero of one of Ned Buntline's frontier stories.

Carson City, like most towns of its age, has many structures in all stages of respectability, and many in all stages of decay. Upon visiting its back streets where the residences are located; one will observe a house presenting a fresh attractive appearance; the yard flourishing with every green thing. Upon the premises adjoining may be found a ranch, or several pig styes, with conveniences for mud baths near the entrance of the front gate. The streets and gutters abound in every article of cast-off abomination to be found in a well filled junk shop; and to make matters worse, they are in all stages of decomposition. If the city fathers do not make an effort and remove these street nuisances, according to the Darwinian theory, the next generation will be born with turned up noses. Darwin in his philosophy proves that every thing in nature originates from some necessity. It does not require any very great stretch of the imagination to conclude how that style of proboscis originated, as it is a well known fact that the above mentioned physiognomy is most frequently met with among the unhappy denizens of filthy back streets and wretched tenements. So much for the Darwinian theory.

I think there must have arrived at Carson lately a cargo of jews-harps, from the fact that scarcely an Indian man or woman is to be seen but what is engaged tuning one of these gentle instruments. The fat "Mahalies" pass upon the street playing the harp and screening their elbows from the jostling crowd.

The people of this city have been somewhat agitated lately over the attempted rape upon the person of a little six-year old girl, by Judge Waitz, a well known citizen, at present engaged in the United States Land Office. Waitz is a short, heavily built man, of fine personal appearance and captivating manners, has a sugar-loafed head, however, broadest at the base, and an unenviable reputation for "baser" qualities. The child is a pretty little innocent of the Evangeline modest type of beauty, not precocious in any respect, but more like an infant than most children of her age. The Judge has been examined by a court of his peers , and of course acquitted honorably in the face of overwhelming evidence against him. There was much grumbling and some threats, and if the child had been seriously injured, his fellow townsmen would have paid little heed to the decision of his peers.

The editorial in the Appeal appearing the morning following the examination, read as do some of the defences written for Henry Ward Beecher, leaving the reader entirely at the mercy of his own opinions at last. This man should not have been tried by a jury of his peers, but by women, even as Laura Fair was tried by men."