Buildings along the north side of Taylor Street between B and A streets in Virginia City.
Wednesday
150 Years Ago
Judge Witherell: The judge made a flying trip to Genoa – not exactly flying, either. He wouldn’t need a very wide pair of wings to keep him up – but off he went to Genoa, and the springs. He needs a change of air after his sickness, and when he comes back, we hope to see him looking more like a man capable of holding his own at the trencher.
140 Years Ago
In brief: John Piper fell twelve feet at the Rhode Island Mill, and he is injured internally.
130 Years Ago
Ferris: In “Halligan’s Illustrated World’s Fair” is a two-page illustration of the great wheel, and its author, Geo. Ferris, the Carson boy whose genius made him famous. He was watching the water wheels in the irrigating ditches on his father’s Nevada ranch, his mind was being adapted to the larger career in store for him.
110 Years Ago
Promoter: Mrs. Bessie Miller of Los Angeles at present in Carson is in the company of people endeavoring to secure a big acreage of land in Fish Lake Valley, Esmeralda County. She is a woman who has achieved considerable prominence in promoting Nevada enterprises. Mrs. Miller has been working on the Fish Valley enterprise for several months and states that she has made arrangements with not less than fifty eastern families to come to Nevada and take up homes after the development of water on the company’s tract.
70 Years Ago
Historic state flags: The Nevada State Museum’s flag collection has been enlarged with several additions: the first two official state flags, released to the museum through the cooperation of Gov. Charles H. Russell to be displayed in the museum together with the state flag already on exhibit. Three state flags are currently on display in the USS Nevada room. The first state flag approved in 1905 was designed by Gov. John Sparks and Col. Henry Day, emblazed in large letters – GOLD, SILVER, NEVADA – with 38 silver and gold stars on a blue background. In 1915 a flag designed by Miss Clara Crisler of Carson City, used the state seal placed in the center of the flag field of dark blue as its dominant theme with the motto “All For our Country.” The present design in 1929 with its sagebrush wreath, single star and wording “Battle Born.” Two flags were presented to the museum at a recent Armistice Day exercise in Carson City, a 38-star flag of Upton Post of GAR of Reno and an old 13-star flag given by Mrs. Agnes B. Nightingale of Reno.
Thursday
150 Years Ago
Advertisement: “Butterick’s Paper Patterns and Sheet Music. At R. Fred Brooks noted store for imported segars [sic], tobacco, books, stationery, musical instruments, cheap jewelry, toys, etc., at Theater Block, next door to Mat. Rinckel’s butcher shop, Carson City. Agency for all the California papers, Gold Hill News, pictorials, and magazines.”
140 Years Ago
Old newspaper: The Austin Reveille, edited by old John Booth, has closed its 42nd volume and is as tough and hearty as its proprietor. The Reveille is a credit to Austin and will continue for years to come.
130 Years Ago
All sorts: Mrs. Gray was brought down from Virginia City for dispensing boozine to aborigines.
Bryson has introduced oyster cocktails. They come in small bottles, just a good-sized drink and are hotter than the side entrance to sheol.
110 Years Ago
Bogus checks an epidemic: Judging from reports that are coming in from a number of men arriving in Carson in the custody of sheriff for deposition the ranks of “check raisers” at the state prison is Ira Knight, who worked at the Arlington Hotel in this city as porter and bartender. He was writing checks on a Carson Valley Bank which had no funds.
70 Years Ago
Novelist Erle Stanley Gardner: No date has been set for a meeting by the State Board of Pardons and Parolees to consider the strange case of Mrs. Emma Jo Johnson. The board was told by novelist, Erle Stanley Gardner, that there was a strong reason to believe the 33-year-old Los Angeles divorcee was convicted of a murder she never committed.
Friday
150 Years Ago
Mansard roof: The State University at Elko is finishing off a new building with a Mansard roof. The university will be opened to advanced students, and those not very far advanced, early next year. These scholars who go beyond their classes in the upper departments of the public schools throughout the state and cannot have the special attention of their teachers further on, may form a nucleus at Elko and be taught with great advantage, being a few, in the highest branches of a liberal education.
140 Years Ago
The Pyramid Mine: Reports from the Pyramid Mine at Pyramid Lake are encouraging. It is a great and very rich body being developed. An assay made from ore taken from the crosscut 500 feet below the surface shows $130.85 silver and $200 per ton copper.
130 Years Ago
Cave Rock no more: Citizens of Glenbrook were startled by an awful roaring which made the earth tremble. Then came a huge wave forty or fifty feet high around the point to the left of Glenbrook. The wall of water came rolling into that place with great velocity over the wharf up into the store and wetting the front of the Lakeshore House.
A great deal of damage had been done to goods in the store, the butcher shop lifted off its foundation and the wharf damaged. Jellerson’s saloon is a wreck and the wharf around the store and saloon is covered with debris. A large log was driven through the rear of the saloon, and one ends now on the billiard table. The meteor and emerald moored in the breakwater near the mill, were thrown against their wharf with such force as to completely knock it out.
It was found that Cave Rock toppled over into the lake. The water had been undermining it at the base for years. Nothing now remains but an unsightly hole in the mountain. By this catastrophe one of the main points of interest on the lake is lost forever.
110 Years Ago
Indian rabbit drive: Eli Barkley and Ed Saxton joined the Indian rabbit drive east of town returning with a full bag of cottontails. The drive was continued in the vicinity of the Hot Springs.
70 Years Ago
Dan DeQuille collection: A collection of the personal papers of the late Dan DeQuille, peerless chronicler of the Virginia City “Big Bonanza,” and mining expert on the west’s pioneer newspaper, “The Territorial Enterprise” has been turned over to the Bancroft library of the University of California. The documents are indexed in 145 files, revealed publicly for the first time, there are many of the personal and human facets in the life of the writer. There are frequent references to DeQuille’s 20-month companionship with Mark Twain while the two were employed on the Virginia City newspaper.
Sue Ballew is the daughter of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.