Ranch hand Nate Easterday walks his horse in a corral at Twin Springs Ranch as the sun rises on the Reveille Mountains. Twin Springs has operated along the Reveille Range since the late 1860s, almost as long as Nevada has been a state.
The story of one of the most rugged and resilient Nevada families, as told by one of the state’s most enduring journalists, is coming to the Nevada State Museum on Thursday, Aug. 13, when photojournalist Jeff Scheid premieres a one-year exhibit, “Ranching in the High Desert: Five Generations, One Family.”
The exhibit text and labels that explain Scheid’s photos are written by Jennifer Robison. The exhibit debuts in the museum’s South Changing Gallery with a free reception from 5 to 7 p.m.
The exhibit shows the day-to-day operations of a ranching family, including teaching the skills of roundup and branding to the family’s younger generation. It explores the role of ranching in Nevada history, cowboys, rodeo traditions and rural Nevada.
The exhibit text says, “Few families embody that ability to adapt more than Nye County’s Fallini clan. The Fallinis have ranched central Nevada’s arid desert for 150 years — for as long as there’s been a Nevada. Ensuring survival of the family’s Twin Springs Ranch has required careful stewardship of the countryside, healthy respect for a fickle Mother Nature and, increasingly, political and policy skill to maneuver ever-changing federal regulations on land use in rural Nevada.”
For more than three decades, Scheid has been photographing Las Vegas. He said he chased down the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang and Chicago mobster Tony “The Ant” Spilotro walking defiantly with his defense attorney Oscar Goodman. He photographed the UNLV Running Rebels basketball team on the road to the national championship. He captured some of the most famous celebrities on the Las Vegas Strip. In a way no one else could, Scheid has been there to tell the story of Las Vegas.
Scheid was born and raised in eastern Montana where the badlands meet the prairie. Inspired by his mother’s work as a journalist, he took his first newspaper job in Glendive, Mont.
“I’m a visual anthropologist photographing Nevada and Las Vegas,” Scheid said.
The museum is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays at 600 N. Carson St. Admission is $8 for adults; free for museum members and ages 17 and younger.
For more information, contact Deborah Stevenson at dstevenson@nevadaculture.org or 775-687-4810, at ext. 237.