This is Carson City: Museums keep Carson’s heart of history beating

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Carson City is an international hub of interest. Most just don’t know it.

But its local curators and historians take pride that Nevada’s capital offers something unique for everyone.

All have a very specific focus on a particular population or portion of the state’s heritage, whether it’s to offer Nevada’s children a place to play and learn at the Children’s Museum of Northern Nevada or a glance at the V & T Railroad and cars in the collection at the Nevada State Railroad Museum. The Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum honors generations of the Great Basin tribes from 1890 through arts and crafts and shares ceremonial and cultural impacts of the boarding school experience.

At the Nevada State Museum, it’s about embracing anyone across the generations who love to learn.

“I just love talking about Nevada with anyone who will listen,” Nevada State Museum curator Mahal Moon said. “I love to just listen to what people want and need in the community and figure out ways to make programs that will serve them the best.”

Moon, who previously worked in the Children’s Museum of Philadelphia, said for the staff members and volunteers overseeing the facilities on a daily basis, the return on their investment is worth it.

“I'm happy to be here and work every day to make the museum a more welcoming place for people in our community,” Moon said. “You're working with the smallest, inquisitive little minds, you know, who love to explore, too, and the oldest of minds who are still learning. It’s amazing. … And that's what I love about museums and informal education versus, you know, the classroom. The opportunities are really limitless here.”

‘HISTORY YOU CAN’T REPLACE’

The Warren Engine Co. No. 1 Museum is a rarity among fire stations. It preserves the history of volunteer firefighters and celebrates the work of current members, some of whom now are second- or third-generation members from what had been three different agencies inside Carson City Fire Department Station No. 51 on South Stewart Street. The Carson City Fire Department, formed in 1964, previously had been on Musser Street.

Visitors come to see the 1847 Hunneman handpump engine, hose carts from the 1800s, two motorized fire engines from the fire department’s formation and fire engine models donated by former firefighter and CCFD’s first paid chief Les Groth, who died in May 2007.

For Teri Norgrove, secretary of the museum who helps ensure the museum’s relics continue to be preserved properly, one highlight is its community reputation. The museum’s 1927 Seagrave keeps its spot in the lineup as the only “living, drivable thing” in the Nevada Day Parade since day one of the event’s existence.

“And we’ve never missed,” she said. “We’ve only been in existence one year longer than the state of Nevada.”

She beams with pride at the thought that local heroes from the past carry such a heritage for Carson.

“I get excited with history,” she said. “My son’s a fireman.”

Keeping the engines going in the most feasible manner possible is a constant question since the museum has to consider the building’s air quality in preserving the engines’ parts and still requires fundraising efforts.

But to continue to get national and international visitors to see the museum makes her involvement well worth it.

“I just want do whatever I can to preserve the history, is what I'm trying to do,” she said. “But it's hard when you when you don’t have volunteers to help. Every holiday I'm not at the railroad museum and it's like, so my kids are like mom. now that I have grandkids, at least they're busy otherwise if they'd be saying, mom, but they know that this is important to me.”

The museum is located at Carson City’s main fire station, which also houses Carson City Fire Department’s administrative offices, at 777 S. Stewart St.

The Nevada State Museum’s “Changing Earth” exhibit offers specimens and fossils as well as a replica of a mammoth and a horse. Displays include more than 300 examples of rocks and minerals found in Nevada and the western United States.

NEVADA’S NATURAL DIVERSITY

The Nevada State Museum, founded by Judge Clark J. Guild and opened on Nevada Day, Oct. 31, 1941, provides a welcoming glimpse into a time-honored and cultured past for indigenous and non-natives. Guild enjoyed the Silver State’s industrious heritage, having come from a background in mining and railroading in Dayton. His purchase of Carson’s Mint building and investment in it as a museum became part of the city and state’s heritage. The former mint would keep the No. 1 where coins would be minted from 1870 to 1893 along with Carson City Morgan dollars.

The facility offers permanent galleries where visitors can enjoy the USS Nevada Battleship silver service and artifacts.

Curator Mahal Moon is one of many staff members and volunteers who work to bring experiences and memories alive for residents and tourists who come through Carson City’s museums like the NSM on a daily or weekly basis.

“It’s a really beautiful example of the kind of opulence that came with the boom of Nevada,” Moon said.

A replica of an 1870s mine shaft, a popular display, shows the working conditions of the time when hoisting engineers and lift operators went down into a tunnel for no more than 20 minutes at a time, she said.

“When people tell us their stories about coming here on their class field trips, this is what most people describe,” she said. “That's our mission here, to be the keeper of Nevada stories.”

For Moon, the NSM celebrates Nevada’s storied past, its people, cultural influences, educational roots and artifacts, and taking the position was taking a chance for her, she said. The idea of obtaining a position in a museum where she could use her anthropology degree and appreciation for cultural artifacts and history was intriguing, but the job market was competitive in a larger metropolitan area and options were limited closer to home in Nevada.

“To have the opportunity to do museum work close to home in the community that raised me, that’s something I couldn’t pass up,” she said. “So I applied and took the leap of faith and moved home and it worked out.”

The museum is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The address is 600 N. Carson St. Admission is free for museum members or $10 for adults and free for children 17 and younger. For information, visit www.carsonnvmuseum.org.

TELLING STEWART’S WHOLE STORY

The Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum has a complicated, beautiful history, Executive Director Stacey Montooth says about the first students from the region’s western tribes who were educated at the school from as early as 1890.

Stewart Indian School in Carson City operated from 1890 to 1980, and in those 90 years, American Indian children had been taken from their homes as part of a forced assimilation to prevent them from practicing their culture and traditions.

“But as the United States consciousness was awakened — the civil rights movement — even aimed specifically with Native Americans, then the government leaders took a different look at how they were handling Indian education and actually our tribal nations in general,” Montooth said. “So eventually the school became grounded in cultures and in fact, one of the big milestones for that was a new superintendent to so how she was a woman.”

Montooth said she often experiences different reactions from both descendants of tribal members, including the Paiute, Washoe and Shoshone, as well as non-natives, when giving presentations about the horrors of the kidnappings, student life in the dormitories at the schools or of students who might have attempted to run away.

“Not long ago, this woman said, ‘So what you're telling us is that, you know, your relatives didn't know how to be a parent?’ And I said, ‘Well, I could see why you'd think that, but really, our relatives didn't have a chance because they were ripped from their parents,’” Montooth said. “They were kidnapped and brought to these isolated areas where the boarding schools were by the hands of the federal government with the idea that we'll teach them in trade schools and then they'll just assimilate into mainstream society and never go back to the reservation.”

The new museum, which opened in January 2020 through state appropriations, helps to represent more than 200 tribal nations, Montooth said. Collections represent items bought for cash and sold not because the museum seeks a profit but because it hopes to support the native artists and their tribes. Everyone is welcome to Stewart to learn about the Great Basin. For the elders of the tribes,

Montooth, a granddaughter of a survivor of the Stewart Indian School and citizen of the Walker River Paiute Nation, was hired as director in 2019. She said she constantly looks out on the school and museum and sees it as a motivation to do what she can to help other Native Americans in her work at Stewart.

“For me personally, as the director of this agency, you know, our charge is to improve the quality of life for the first people of this land,” she said. “We have 28 federally recognized tribes and over 70,000 urban Indians. Those are people that don't live on reservations anymore. … This is an ideal platform for me to bring educators to bring elected officials, you know, policymakers, people that decide what's going to be taught in our classrooms or what's not going be taught in our classrooms.”

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is closed on weekends and state and federal holidays. The address is 1 Jacobsen Way. Admission is free. For information, call 775-687-7608 or go to https://stewartindianschool.com.

A timeline in the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum exhibits important dates prior to and during the 90 years of assimilation in which Stewart operated as a boarding school.

REACHING GENERATIONS BY RAIL

It surprises and fascinates Adam Michalski, the Nevada State Railroad Museum’s curator of history, to have met visitors from all over the world in Carson City who come to see the Virginia and Truckee Railroad locomotives on display. There’s a chance to make a connection to the local community and to those who come across the state, from the United States or from other nations to share a piece of Northern Nevada’s history.

“I think maybe the community doesn't always think of their place being a global destination that people from outside of the U.S. might seek, but we get a lot of visitors to Carson City just to see our trains because they've heard about it through whatever newspapers or magazines, photos, websites,” he said. “They're just interested for whatever reason in the trains that we have because they're historic.”

The Railroad Museum opened Memorial Day 1980 and is owned by the state as a cultural resource dedicated to collecting and preserving information, artifacts, photographs and items pertaining to the trains, railroads and railroading in Nevada. Its operations are not funded by the Nevada Legislature except to provide for the salaries of its employees and keep its lights on, Michalski said; otherwise, it relies on the support of donations for its restoration work and events.

With a staff of about 13 and volunteers that number between 80 to 100, the museum operates its trains, offers tours and works on projects, most of which are dedicated to the V&T Railroad that once ran between Carson City to Virginia City and from Minden to Reno.

While the railroad did decline in use throughout the use, it did find its niche in Hollywood and the museum helped to answer some of its calls in offering up trains or equipment for television shows or movies in the 20th century.

The V&T locomotive No. 22, the Inyo, for example, one of the museum’s oldest original operating steam trains in Nevada and in North America, was built in 1875 and first worked as the Gold Hill switch engine. Although not used often on the V&T during the 1930s, Paramount Pictures purchased it in 1937 for the film “High, Wide and Handsome” and in director Cecil B. DeMille’s “Union Pacific.” The State of Nevada would purchase the Inyo in 1974 and move it four years to Carson City for restoration.

While most fans of the railroad are older, Michalski said, there’s a real passion amongst families with younger children to come see the museum’s trains and enjoy a brief ride and to enjoy the Western experience on the Comstock, he said. Staff and volunteers also enjoy the exchange of information and not merely disseminating it to those who come about how long it might take to restore a train, if the process proceeds, such as the Glenbrook that has taken 34 years because of the cost to replace a boiler. The project, which began in approximately 1981, was completed in 2015.

“We have pieces of equipment that are 150 years old, almost 150 years old, still operating today, and people from around the world want to see this,” he said.

The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday through Monday. The location is 2180 S. Carson St. Admission is free for museum members, $10 for adults and free children 17 and younger. For information, call 775-687-6953 or visit https://www.carsonrailroadmuseum.org/.

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

Putting the region’s youngest, most imaginative minds to work through crafts, storytime and exhibits in an engaging manner is the Children’s Museum of Northern Nevada’s goal. The private nonprofit offers programming on the weekends and offers children and families a chance to learn and play together and burn a little extra energy.

The Children’s Museum opened in 1994 and operates in Carson City’s historic building that once served as its Civic Auditorium built in 1939. Programming has been to bring interactive, artistic and scientific experiences based on Nevada’s state teaching standards that gradually have been transformed to introduce new exhibits for the youngest learners.

Museum director Becky Hall, who left this position in November, said her goal in the post-COVID era is to revive the facility after its closure during the pandemic. The museum offers a train area, construction zone, the Nevada’s Capitol building, an outdoor and taxidermy area and arts and crafts are changed out every week. The Children’s Museum works to keep its regular families attending but also receives visitors who are curious about what it offers kids, so Hall said staff and volunteers work to keep its activities fresh and new.

“It’s been a slow trickle back, and two years after reopening, I think we’re in a good spot to continue to grow from other organizations … and we’re getting the word out of who we are, that we are an asset to the community and that it is a safe environment that we can be trusted not just with your kids but with what we can do for the community,” Hall said.

The Warren Engine Co. No. 1 Museum features a 1927 Suburbanite Pumper for which the company donated $4,000 and lobbied the Nevada Legislature for $3,500 to purchase the vehicle and 500 feet of hose. The Seagrave, a predecessor to most models today, served Carson City from 1927 until its retirement in 1972 and remains active in local parades and other activities.

Minden resident Natalie Love, a mother of two, said she has been bringing her daughter, 4, and son, 2, regularly to the Children’s Museum, for years and officially joined as a member in August. She has enjoyed its curriculum for the different age groups, noting its engagement for the younger children in particular.

Her son, Owen, whom she said has a shorter attention span, easily is kept occupied with the museum’s toys, tools and activities. Both of her children enjoy opportunities in simple concepts by learning about sea turtles, hair or eye color or creating arts and crafts.

“I just think if you come here often enough, it pays for itself, especially since everywhere, prices are increasing,” Love said. “I think if I bring them here four or five times a year, it pays for itself, and I plan to on Fridays.”

In appreciation for its supporters, the museum held an opening reception for its new Fossil Lab Exhibit, which offered to the public a glance of its Nevadadromeus schmiiti, the state’s first named dinosaur that Hall researched and named with her husband Joshua Bonde, director of the Nevada State Museum. The fossil came from the Valley of Fire State Park in Clark County. Hall, a paleontologist by training, said she is passionate about connecting children and the public with dinosaurs and the stories told through fossils well preserved through petrified wood and skin impressions found in Eureka, where she and Bonde married, or elsewhere.

The museum is open 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. The address is 813 N. Carson St., Carson City, Nev. 89701. For more information about admission, memberships and upcoming events, visit www.cmnn.org.