Comstock Firemen's Museum is Hot Commodity in Virginia City

Comstock Firemen's Museum in Virginia City (courtesy of Sydney Martinez/Travel Nevada)

  With all the various attractions in the historic Nevada mining town of Virginia City, it’s easy to overlook one of the most unique—the Comstock Firemen’s Museum.

  Located on the town’s main street at 125 South C Street, the museum is also free, although donations are much appreciated.

  The museum, which was established in 1979 by Virginia City’s volunteer fire department, is exactly what the name says, a repository of 19th century Comstock region firefighting equipment, uniforms, and vehicles, all accented by displays containing historic photographs and information.

  Part of the reason that Virginia City acquired such an impressive array of then-state-of-the-art firefighting equipment was because of the impact deadly fires had on the community in the late 19th century.

  The worst conflagration occurred with the Great Fire of 1875, which resulted in the burning of the majority of the city and millions of dollars in damage.

  As a result, the museum contains a number of unusual firefighting gear including fire grenades (a glass bottle or orb usually containing liquid to extinguish a fire, such as salt water) and vintage rope life-nets, used to catch a person leaping from a burning building.

  Additionally, the museum boasts Nevada’s oldest and longest-serving fire apparatus, an 1839 Christian Hight four-wheel hand-drawn hose carriage as well as an 1856 Lysander Button & Co. hand-drawn, hand-pumped fire engine and several two-wheeled hand-drawn hose carts from the early 1870s.

  Other historic equipment on display include an 1877 Kimball & Co. horse-drawn hose carriage, an 1879 steam-powered fire engine, and an 1880 hand-drawn, hand-pumped fire engine.

  Some of the historic equipment on display have appeared in movies, including “In Old Chicago,” released in 1937, “The Santa Fe Trail,” released in 1940, and “The Man Behind the Gun,” which came out in 1953.

  Displays around the tightly-packed museum spotlight various firefighting tools, uniform shirts, leather belts and helmets, emergency lights and sirens, vintage fire extinguishers, a host of nozzle tips, hose adaptors and fittings, and uniform insignia.

  The museum is housed in an historic brick structure, erected in 1876 (right after the Great Fire) that previously housed a broker’s business, a meat market, a saloon and a brewery. It also was home of the Storey County Fire Department from 1930 until the 1960s.

  A good overview of the museum can be found on the Virginia City Tourism Commission’s website, which has an audio tour of the facility (listen at: https://visitvirginiacitynv.com/firehouse-museum-audio-tour/).

  The Comstock Firemen’s Museum, also known as the Nevada State Firemen’s Museum/Liberty Engine Company No. 1, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from May to October, and on weekends (weather permitting) during November and December. For more information, go to http://www.comstockfiremuseum.com.

Carson City's Kit Carson Trail Continues to Thrive

  In 1993, Candy Duncan, former executive director of the Carson City Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Mary Walker, former Carson City finance and redevelopment director, decided Carson City needed its own version of Boston’s famous Freedom Trail.

  Walker had visited Boston’s trail and thought the idea of a walking tour to historic sites, all linked by some kind of visible line or trail, could work in Nevada’s Capital City.

  After hearing the concept, Duncan was immediately on board and began working out the details with her staff. The result was the Kit Carson Trail, a walking/driving tour of nearly 50 of Carson City’s most historic locations.

  A bright blue line was painted on the sidewalks in front of each property so someone following the 2.5-mile-long trail could easily move from one site to the next.

  Carson City officials also developed a colorful, oversized brochure/map describing the trail and including illustrations and a brief history of each property. Interestingly, a copy of this original walking tour guide recently appeared on eBay with an asking price of $26.51!

  Duncan and Walker also reached out to others, including a local writer/performer named Mary Bennett, to offer daytime “ghost walks.” These walks would be tours of the trail led by a guide (or guides) in period costume. These tours proved extremely popular, especially around Nevada Day, which always occurs near Halloween.

  Over the past three decades-plus, Bennett has taken on a more prominent role in the production of the ghost walks. These days, she, often joined by family members and actors from Reno’s Brüka Theatre, lead regular evening “spirit-led” walking tours of the trail.

  For anyone interested in one of her guided tours, go to the Carson City Ghost Walk website, http://carsoncityghostwalk.com/. Tickets, which cost $15 in advance ($20 at the door) are available at http://www.purplepass.com/carsoncityghostwalk.

  After the trail had been around for several decades, city officials decided to forego the painted blue line, which was expensive to maintain, and replaced it with replica stone carriage markers noting the locations.

  They also developed an interactive audio guide, which can be accessed on a smart phone at https://visitcarsoncity.com/kit-carson-trail-self-guided-tour/, or using a QR code found on the website.

  The city also created a useful downloadable trail map (https://visitcarsoncity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/KitCarsonTrailMap_2022_Final.pdf). The map is definitely worth checking out as it offers an overview graphic of the various historic places and short descriptions and addresses.

  As for what a visitor might find along the trail, the historic landmarks include the Nevada State Museum (formerly the Carson City Mint), built in the 1860s, the former homes of several past Nevada governors, a large number of elegant Victorian mansions built by prominent local merchants in the 19th century and the Orion Clemens House, once owned by writer Mark Twain’s brother (who was an occasional guest).

  The complete list of historic sites on the trail, with their back stories, can be viewed at https://visitcarsoncity.com/attractions/details-on-kit-carson-trail/. Additionally, an informative video of the tour can be found at https://visitcarsoncity.com/attractions/kit-carson-trail/.

Austin's Venerable Reese River Reveille Returns

 

  A lot of things make Austin’s historic Reese River Reveille newspaper special.

  For one, it holds the record for once being the “oldest continuously published newspaper” in the state, appearing from 1863 to 1993.

  For another, it was generally recognized as the second-most famous newspaper in the state, after Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, in the 19th century.

  And lastly, from 1873 to 1878, the Reveille was edited by one of the most noteworthy frontier journalists in early Nevada, Fred Hart.

  In fact, it was during Hart’s tenure that the Reveille published the accounts of the “Sazarac Lying Club,” a social organization that conducted regular meetings during which members tried to outwit each other by telling the biggest lies.

  The rub was that Hart had made-up the club and wrote all the regular dispatches about the meetings, which, of course, never took place.

  It is with all of that in mind that in 2018, Reno historian Eric Moody, who served as curator of manuscripts for the Nevada Historical Society for 30 years, decided to resurrect the Reveille.

  In a Reno News and Review interview that year, Moody said that he acquired the trade name of the newspaper a few years earlier after being told it was available. At the time, he was publishing a magazine, Nevada in the West, which focused on Nevada history.

  “We had to do something to keep the trade name alive,” he said. “So, we came up with reviving the Reveille as a tourist-oriented publication, just twice a year now, maybe a little more often later on.”

  Moody’s revived Reveille, which he continues to produce twice annually (June and December), is a kind of magazine/newsletter offering a mix of articles spotlighting historic sites, buildings and people in and around Austin, as well as current special events and happenings in the community.

  The publication is sold in local motels, restaurants and shops in Austin or is available by subscription for $5 per year. Anyone interested can send a check to Nevada in the West Publishing, 846 Victorian Avenue, Suite 24H, Sparks, NV 89431, or call 775-762-3924.

  One of the best aspects of the publication are the contributions by several well-known Nevada historians including Stanley Paher, author of the definitive work, “Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Nevada,” the late Phillip I. Earl, who was curator of history at the Nevada Historical Society for 26 years, Jeff Kintop, former Nevada State Archivist and, of course, Moody, who had written several Nevada history books himself.

  The most recent edition (Jan.-June 2023) includes a nice story on 19th century gunfights in Austin’s famed International Hotel, written by Robert W. Ellison, author of “Territorial Lawmen of Nevada” and other works, who is another regular contributor.

  Issues also include short items reprinted from past issues of the Reveille, photos of historic buildings still found in Austin, and a scattering of contemporary advertising by local merchants including an art gallery, several bed & breakfasts, motels and restaurants, rock shops (Austin is famous for its turquoise) and a trading post.

  It’s definitely worth checking out.

Whatever Happened to Harrah's Auto World?

Harrah's Auto Collection in the 1970s

   Most customers in the Home Depot on Summit Ridge Court on the west side of Reno have no idea that if things had gone a little bit differently, they might be standing inside a giant pyramid structure housing one of the world’s largest and most impressive vintage automobile collections.

   That site on the edge of the Biggest Little City was once earmarked to be home of a multi-million-dollar auto museum/hotel-casino complex/amusement park that was to be known as Harrah’s Auto World.

   The project was the brainchild of the legendary Northern Nevada casino-hotel boss, William “Bill” Harrah, who, in addition to owning large resorts at Reno and Lake Tahoe, had an extraordinary collection of vintage automobiles that, at its peak, numbered some 1,400 cars (the number varies according to the source).

   Harrah was born in 1911 in South Pasadena, California. His father, John Harrah, was a politically-connected attorney, who, after losing nearly all his money in the stock market crash in 1929, opened a small gambling parlor that offered a type of Bingo known as “the Reno game.”

   After learning the ins and outs of the game, Bill Harrah purchased the rights to the business from his father. He continued operating the game in spite of regular harassment from local law enforcement.

   In 1937, Harrah decided to relocate to Reno, where he could operate his Bingo franchise openly and without fear of being shut down by police. Within a few years, he had moved into table games and slots, and, by the late 1940s he was one of the city’s most successful casino operators.

   Starting in 1948, Harrah began collecting vintage automobiles (as well as to indulge his love of airplanes and hydroplanes). His first acquisition was a 1911 Maxwell, which Harrah originally believed was a 1907 edition. In the process of restoring the Maxwell, he discovered it had been cobbled together with parts from several autos, which only made him more determined to become an expert on antique car restoration.

   Between 1948 and 1978, Harrah acquired some 1,400 cars and had a staff of more than 70 to maintain and restore his collection of vehicles. By some estimates, he spent more than $40 million into his cars.

   By the early 1960s, Harrah began leasing a complex of former ice storage buildings in the industrial area of Sparks, and displaying his car collection. A visit to the collection at that time was an almost mind-numbing experience, with hundreds of cars lined up inside the massive buildings.

   Harrah was a completist, often acquiring every year’s model of a particular automobile brand, including Franklins (a now defunct car company that operated from 1902-1934), Fords, and others.

   In the early 1970s, Harrah purchased 360 acres on the southwest and southeast corners of McCarran Boulevard and I-80, to serve as the site of a massive museum-hotel-casino complex that could house his auto collection. He hired famed hotel architect Martin Stern Jr., who had designed the International Hotel (now called Resorts World Las Vegas/Las Vegas Hilton) in Las Vegas, to draft plans for his homage to his cars.

   Stern’s designs, which can be viewed on the University of Nevada Las Vegas’ Special Collections website (https://www.library.unlv.edu/whats_new_in_special_collections/2017/03/collection-highlight-martin-stern-jrs-architectural-vision), depict a sprawling compound with a giant replica of an old hot air balloon, a high-rise hotel-casino, and a large, modern museum structure with a giant geodesic dome in the center.

   A description on the website notes that the museum would consist of several “galleries of numerous time pockets” that would be filled with cars, naval ships, various types of aircraft, and even a dirigible. The concept was to show the evolution of transportation in America.

   The designs even evolved over time, with early schematics showing a sort of 1960s version of modernism and later ones showing a massive pyramid structure housing all the galleries. Running around the buildings would be a vintage steam train.

   In his book, Playing the Cards that are Dealt, former Harrah Corporation chairperson Meade Dixon said that at one point in the mid-1970s the company’s board of directors authorized spending $45 million (more than $181 million in today’s dollars) to construct the project.

   But Harrah’s Auto World was not to be.

   In June 1978, Harrah entered the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to have surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm (he’d has a similar operation in 1972 without complications). This time, however, he died during the operation.

   In the aftermath, Harrah’s wife and heirs decided to sell the company and the massive auto collection, which had been purchased through the corporation. During the next few years, the new owner, Holiday Inns, is said to have recouped its entire investment by auctioning and selling the cars.

   Fortunately, about 175 vehicles, including the 1911 Maxwell and many one-of-a-kind models, were donated by Holiday Inns to the William F. Harrah Foundation, which had been formed to build a museum in Reno to house the remaining cars.

   The group was able to raise funds for the museum, which opened in 1989. Today, it displays about 200 cars (those from the Harrah’s collection and others that have been donated) and is one of the premier automobile history facilities in the country.

   As for the Auto World site, Holiday Inns sold the land, which was developed for other commercial reasons (such as a Home Depot). The $45 million set aside to build the museum was redirected to finance a major expansion of Harrah’s Reno resort in 1977.

   In March 2020, Harrah’s Reno closed its doors for good. The property was sold and is currently being renovated into a mixed-use property, known as Reno City Center, with retail shops, office space and about 530 apartments.