Explore Nevada's Myths and Mysteries

A couple of years ago, I had the good fortune to write a book about Nevada’s most enduring mysteries and myths. The book apparently sold pretty well because my publisher recently asked me to expand it for a new second edition, which has just been released.

Called “Nevada’s Myths and Legends: The True Stories Behind History’s Mysteries,” the book highlights 19 of what I believe are the state’s most colorful and fascinating legends or mysteries.

Among the legends featured in the book:

• Who really killed gangster Bugsy Siegel, the man considered the progenitor of modern-day Las Vegas? While the case has never been officially closed, there are plenty of potential suspects including rival gangsters and unhappy friends and associates (to whom he owed lots of money).

• What’s with all the strange stories related to Lake Tahoe? In ancient times, a horrible, birdlike, man-eating monster is said to have lived at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. More recently, there have been sightings of a giant serpent-like creature, affectionately known as Tahoe Tessie. And then there are those tales about acres of perfectly preserved human bodies resting in the deepest parts of the lake.

• “Was the Garden of Eden Located in Nevada?” is what a 1924 newspaper headline asked in a front-page story describing the findings of Captain Alan Le Baron, who saw something positively biblical in the “petrified remains” of once-lush forests in a remote river valley south of Yerington.

• Did Nevada’s U.S. Senator Key Pittman die a few days before he was up for re-election? Was his body preserved in ice to keep people from finding out the truth? This piece of “fake-lore,” as former Nevada State Archivist Guy Louis Rocha calls it, has made the rounds for years.

• Whatever happened to Reno banker Roy Frisch? In 1931, Frisch was scheduled to testify against Reno gangsters Bill Graham and Jim McKay. A few days prior to his appearance he walked from the home he shared with his mother to catch a show at a nearby movie theater. While witnesses reported seeing him leaving the theater to return home, he never made it. His mysterious disappearance remains one of the Biggest Little City’s biggest mysteries.

• Who really robbed the First National Bank of Winnemucca in 1900? For years, many have claimed that outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid participated in robbing the First National Bank in Winnemucca. Evidence, however, seems to indicate that while members of their gang probably helped commit the crime, the notorious duo most likely weren’t anywhere near Winnemucca when it occurred.

Among the new stories included in the book are:

• What’s the story behind the town of Metropolis, located near Wells in Northeastern Nevada? Was it a real estate scam or just the victim of a series of unfortunate events? Or a bit of both? In 1911, Metropolis could proudly boast of having a train depot, a 50-room brick hotel with electric lights, a two-story schoolhouse, and phone service. But within a decade it was all falling apart. Initially because of a water rights lawsuit and then its troubles were compounded by invasions of Mormon crickets and jackrabbits. Today, it’s one of Nevada’s few non-mining-related ghost towns.

• Was the death of Raymond Spilsbury, the man who built the Boulder Dam Hotel, a suicide or something more sinister? In 1945, Spilsbury drowned in the Colorado River. But when his body was pulled from the current, his pockets were filled with rocks and his feet were tied together with his own belt. His widow believed there were unanswered questions after authorities ruled it suicide.

“Nevada Myths and Legends: The True Stories Behind History’s Mysteries, Second Edition,” by Richard Moreno, is published by Globe Pequot and is available in local bookstores, like Sundance Books in Reno, or on Amazon.

Overland Stage Line Once Passed Through Central Nevada

Most know that U.S. 50 through Nevada parallels portions of the historic Pony Express trail (and the old Lincoln Highway), but less well known is the fact that the route also parallels what was known as the Overland Mail and Stage Line.

Fortunately, a few reminders of this equally important transportation link—which operated from about 1861 to 1869—have survived the passing of time, including the ruins of several stone corrals and some foundations.

Before the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the Overland Stage served as the nation’s primary commercial cross-country transportation system. While it wasn't cheap to go from St. Joseph, Missouri to San Francisco—more than $200 a passenger—the journey attracted plenty of takers, including a young Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).

In “Roughing It,” Twain, who seems to have enjoyed the experience, describes his carriage as “a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous description—an imposing cradle on wheels.

“We sat on the back seat inside. About all of the rest of the coach was full of mailbags—for we had three days' delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall of mail matter rose up to the roof.”

The Overland Stage was developed parallel to the Pony Express Route, which had also begun operating in 1861. While the two shared some stations, the stage line constructed additional facilities between Pony Express stations because its heavier stages required more frequent changes in horses.

In 1862 or 1863, the Overland revised the western portion of the trip across Nevada, requiring the construction of new stations. These changes came just as the Pony Express was discontinued and the transcontinental telegraph was completed.

Despite its hefty prices, the Overland was not a financial success. Money woes plagued the stage line during most of its existence, even after it became part of the Wells Fargo and Company in 1866.

Additionally, the line wasn't particularly efficient. Attacks by tribes angry about the intrusion of the stages on their lands interfered with regular service and resulted in considerable delays and loss of mail and other cargo (not to mention a few lives).

According to one history book, mail actually had a better chance of getting delivered to San Francisco by boat than via the stage.

Weather also proved a serious problem, with the stage line resorting to sleighs to get over the Sierra range in the winter months.

Of course, the stage line was always perceived as a temporary measure while the West awaited the coming of the Iron Horse. For a time, the two worked in tandem; mail was carried part of the way via train, then transported by stage between the not-quite-connected railroad.

But on May 10, 1869, the last rail was driven at Promontory Point, Utah, and the stage line quietly disappeared.

Today, among the best and most accessible places to find the remains of the Overland’s system of stations are at Rock Creek (near Cold Springs on U.S. 50, halfway between Fallon and Austin) and at New Pass (25 miles west of Austin).

The Rock Creek site, located adjacent to the highway and designated by an historical marker, dates to about 1862. Stagecoach drivers could find fresh horses, crude accommodations, a blacksmith shop and wagon repair services here.

The site, surrounded by a high fence, is little more than stone rubble, stacked higher at the corners, in a vaguely rectangular pattern. If you look closely, you can still make out door passages and places for windows.

About a half-mile north are more stone walls, also surrounded by a fence, which are all that remains of a telegraph repeater and maintenance station. This facility, also built in the early 1860s, was part of the Overland Telegraph-Pacific Telegraph Company's transcontinental line, built in 1861 between Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento. This structure was abandoned in August 1869.

About a mile and half east of the Rock Creek site is the location of the Cold Springs Pony Express Station. These substantial rock ruins, which can only be reached on foot, are considered to be among the best-preserved Pony Express ruins in Nevada.

At New Pass, you can find slightly more substantial rock walls, also protected by a wire fence. Apparently, the roof of this native stone structure, now long gone, consisted of bundles of stacked willow twigs.

The historic marker notes that a nearby spring proved inadequate for the station's use, so water was brought in from a ranch a mile away. This site also once included a small hotel and store, which served local miners.

Other Overland Stage buildings still intact include: a crude, wooden Ruby Valley Pony Express cabin, which was moved to the Northeastern Nevada Museum in Elko in 1976; the restored Bucklands Station building at Fort Churchill State Park; the International Hotel in Austin; and Friday's Station (now a private home) at South Lake Tahoe.

If Walls Could Talk: Reno's William J. Graham House

Few people driving on California Avenue through the historic Newland Heights neighborhood of Old Southwest Reno give a second glance to the tidy Tudor Revival house sitting on the corner of California and Gordon avenues.

But the house, now a lawyer’s office, was the longtime home of William J. Graham, a once prominent Reno casino owner who, along with his partner, James McKay, were influential power brokers/gamblers/gangsters in the city during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

During their heyday, Graham and McKay were often referred to as “sportsmen” in the local media, a term often used to politely describe professional gamblers. Veteran Reno journalist and historical writer Dennis Myers has written that the two had “their fingers in many financial pots and were as dangerous as cobras.”

Graham, who was born in San Francisco in 1891, first partnered with McKay, who was born in Virginia City in 1888, in the mining boomtowns of Tonopah and Goldfield. The two worked in a variety of enterprises, including running the Big Casino Club in Tonopah, before relocating to Reno in about 1920.

In 1922, Graham and McKay bought and operated “The Willows,” an elegant nightclub (on Mayberry Road west of the city) that became known as the primary gathering place for those seeking a Reno divorce. Additionally, they established the Bank Club in downtown Reno, which quickly became the largest casino in the world (at a time when gambling was illegal in the city).

While in central Nevada, Graham and McKay also befriended the powerful George Wingfield, a mining and banking operator who for a time was considered the richest man in the state. Wingfield, in fact, persuaded the two to move to Reno when he shifted his operations from the two mining towns to the Biggest Little City in the World.

In addition to their gambling operations in Reno, Graham and McKay, through their real estate holding company known as Riverside Securities, owned the land under the city’s notorious “red light” district, the Stockade.

It’s also been reported that Graham and McKay had many underworld friends who occasionally would hide out in Reno while the FBI or other law enforcement officials were looking for them in other parts of the country.

Among their guests in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s were well-known criminals like John Dillinger, Lester “Baby Face” Nelson, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, and Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. These “friends” found that for the right price the gambling clubs of Graham and McKay were useful for laundering money that law enforcement officials might otherwise be able to trace.

While apparently no evidence ever directly linked Wingfield’s banks to Graham and McKay’s activities, it has been pointed out that those banks often served as willing partners in their legal and illegal enterprises, including loaning money to Graham and McKay.

Graham and McKay’s empire began to crumble in the mid-1930s. At a time when Wingfield was fighting for his own financial life as a result of bank failures caused by bad loans, exacerbated by the national financial crisis of the Great Depression, Graham and McKay found themselves fighting to stay out of jail.

On January 31, 1934, the two were indicted on federal charges of mail fraud for their part in an elaborate “bunco” scam that swindling gullible investors out of an estimated $2.5 million.

In the end, following three trials (the first two ended with a hung jury), Graham and McKay were convicted of four counts of mail fraud and conspiracy. The pair was fined $11,000 each and sentenced to nine years in federal prison (they would serve just under six years each).

In 1950, at the request of Nevada’s U.S. Senator Pat McCarran, Graham and McKay received full presidential pardons from President Harry Truman.

After returning to Reno from prison, the two resumed operating the Bank Club. In 1952, however, they dissolved their long partnership in the operation and McKay effectively retired (he died in 1962 following a lengthy illness).

Graham continued his involvement in several Reno casinos and hotels until the mid-1950s, when he, too, sold his interests and quietly dropped out of the limelight. He and his wife, Bertha, continued to live in the house until his death, in 1965, and her death, in 1968.

The 548 California Avenue house, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1983, was designed by prominent California architect George A Shastey for the Grahams. Completed in 1928, the structure was built of brick with half-timbered stucco gables.

When the home was sold by the Graham estate in 1969, the new owner discovered escape routes installed by Graham from different parts of the house and that the original tile-faced lobby fireplace had never been used and was stuffed with 1929 newspapers.