Visiting the White Hoodoos of Remote McCann Canyon

 

  McCann Canyon in the Monitor Range of Central Nevada isn’t particularly well known and doesn’t get many visitors in spite of its spectacular beauty.

  No doubt the reason is because the canyon, which boasts beautiful snowy-white rock hoodoos (which are defined as a tall, thin spire of rock) are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, miles from any community.

  To reach it, you have to head about 20 miles southeast of the ghost town of Belmont, on the eastern side of the Monitor Valley, via a graded dirt road.

  And since there aren’t any road signs indicating how to reach the canyon, it’s a good idea to consult a good road atlas such as the Nevada Road & Recreation Atlas by Benchmark Maps. Visitors looking for the canyon should have a four-wheel drive vehicle.

  After driving across the Monitor Valley from Belmont, you turn onto a fairly well-maintained dirt road that led southeast into the Monitor Range. The route takes you by a handful of remote but picturesque ranches before the road narrows and begins to climb into the mountains.

  The chalky white hills of McCann Canyon can’t be seen until after driving about a dozen miles through forests of scruffy piñon and juniper trees on a windy dirt road.

  Just below the canyon, a more rugged dirt track branches off from the main road and toward the small side canyon containing the formations. Here, the trees reluctantly part to allow vehicles to pass.

  The road becomes nearly impassable about a mile or so into the canyon, so it’s best to continue on foot to the back end of the canyon, which contains a large but impressive white cluster of jagged outcroppings and cone-shaped rock pillars.

  On the canyon sides are coffee-colored cliffs, some with small caves that look as if they had been created by a giant ice cream scooper. Ahead, the pointed mounds of rough, chalky stone resemble large anthills.

  Near the back of the canyon is a steep hill of loose, sediment—like walking up a huge sand dune—and at the top a visitor is afforded a good overview of the canyon’s alabaster formations.

  From here, the view of the McCann hoodoos is incredible. Some look like massive shark teeth while others have rounded tops. The stone sculptures were created by erosion, as wind and water wore away softer rock and left behind these magnificent monoliths.

  Up close, the rock towers seem to be made of different kinds of rocks, with some rough to the touch, feeling like badly mixed concrete.

  Some of the spires are topped with knobs or flat blocks, while others are pointed and sharp. Look long enough and it’s easy to imagine faces in the stone or animal shapes. Some are etched with horizontal lines—perhaps indicating a water line or a different layer of stone—while others have diagonal lines, as if twisted like a wet dishrag by some kind of powerful geological force.

  One of the most interesting aspects of the canyon is the lack of rusted cans, broken glass bottles, plastic wrappers or discarded gun shells—items too often found in remote, beautiful places in Nevada.

  In fact, there is only the ghostly white spires and near-total silence, interrupted occasionally by a squawking bird.

  This is the real Nevada.

The Place Where Levi's Jeans Were Born

  Many visitors to downtown Reno barely notice the small plaque in front of 211 N. Virginia Street.

  However, the sign, erected in 2006, commemorates one of the most important inventions ever made in the Biggest Little City in the World—Levi’s blue jeans.

  It is located in front of the former location of Jacob W. Davis’ tailor shop and residence. Davis was born Jacob Youphes in Latvia in 1831. He emigrated to America when he was 23 years old (which is when he changed his name) and became a journeyman tailor working in New York, Maine and Northern California.

  In 1868, he came to Reno, where he was initially employed as a laborer helping to build the Reno Brewing Company brewery. About a year later, he opened his own tailor shop, and began making horse blankets, tents and wagon covers for the surveyors and teamsters working on the Central Pacific Railroad.

  In his work, he generally utilized a sturdy, off-white No. 7 Duck cloth and a nine-inch blue denim cloth, both sold to him by a San Francisco manufacturer named Levi Strauss.

  In late 1870, a woman came into his shop to ask Davis to make a special pair of pants for her husband, who was a wood-cutter. She explained that he was far too large for any of the available ready-made clothing—reportedly he had a 56-inch waist—and he needed extra-sturdy pants that wouldn’t rip when he was working.

  She said he was too sick to come to the shop to be measured so she had tied knots in a piece of string to indicate his enormous waist and inseam size.

  Davis decided to try making a giant pair of pants for the gentleman using the thick, ten-ounce No. 7 Duck cloth that he usually used for making tents. His background as a maker of horse blankets provided him with an inventive solution for how to bind the seams and pockets—incorporate copper rivets at the stress points.

  Within a short time, word had spread about Davis’ “waist overalls,” which were tough and dependable. Charging $3 a pair, Davis reportedly sold more than 200 pairs in the next year and a half.

  Recognizing he needed a business partner, in 1872 Davis approached Strauss and asked him for help in applying for a patent for his popular pants. Along the way, he also decided to primarily use the blue cotton twill, which was manufactured in France and called “serge de Nimes,” which was later shortened to “denim.”

  On May 20, 1873, the U.S. Patent Office granted the two an official patent for the denim pants with the copper rivets. That same year, Davis began sewing a double orange threaded stitched design onto the back pocket of the jeans to distinguish them from those made by competitors. This feature was trademarked and remains a distinctive feature of all Levi jeans.  

  Once the patent had been granted, Davis sold his Reno tailor shop and relocated to San Francisco to become the production manager for Strauss’ new denim pants manufacturing plant. He continued in that role until his death in 1908.

  Today, approximately 1.25 billion pairs of Levi’s blue jeans are sold around the world each year.

Historic Palisade Knew How to Entertain

Road to Palisade, Nevada

  More than a century before Las Vegas discovered the value of giant LED domes (the Sphere) or massive Ferris wheels (the Holy Roller Las Vegas Strip Observation Wheel), the town of Palisade discovered that entertainment was the best way to put a place on the map.

  According to legend, however, Palisade-style entertainment involved a gruesomely realistic shoot-out that was held just about every time a train stopped in the town.

  For several years during the early 1870s, all passing Central Pacific Railroad trains made a brief stop in the tiny hamlet of Palisade (located about 40 miles west of Elko) for water and wood.

  When passengers disembarked to stretch their legs, they suddenly encountered a crowd of angry, armed thugs. A realistic-looking fight would ensue and the rough-looking toughs would pull out their revolvers and begin to shoot at each other.

  As the terrified passengers scampered back onto the train, they looked back to see bodies lying on the street in what appeared to be bright red pools of blood.

  As the train pulled out, a band of “Indians” suddenly appeared and joined the fracas, resulting in a few more hideous deaths. However, once the train departed, the “dead” miraculously rose from the street and retired to the nearby saloons. 

  The attack was all show. The shooters fired blanks and the blood was from a local slaughterhouse.

  Since that time, things have greatly quieted down in Palisade. In fact, if you stand in the cemetery that overlooks the former site of the town, just about the only thing you hear is the rushing waters of the nearby Humboldt River and the wind whistling through the steep canyon walls for which the area was named.

  In the 1870s and 1880s, Palisade was an important railroad stop, at one time serving three different rail lines, including the Central Pacific, the Eureka and Palisade and the Western Pacific.

  The Central Pacific Railroad established the town in 1870. Within a few years, it grew to more than 300 residents and competed with Elko and Carlin as a major rail shipping point serving the booming mining camps of Mineral Hill, Eureka and Hamilton.

  In 1875, the Eureka and Palisade Railroad was completed, which connected the town to the productive mines of Eureka, located about 90 miles to the south.

  The Eureka and Palisade also located its operating headquarters, a depot (shared with the Central Pacific), repair shops and a large ore transfer dock in the community.

  For the next 55 years, the narrow gauge rail line transported millions of dollars in ore from the Eureka area, transferring it at Palisade to the Central Pacific (later Southern Pacific) and, after 1910, Western Pacific lines.

  By the mid-1880s, the community included saloons, a handful of stores and businesses, hotels, a school and several churches.

  As so often happened to towns dependent on mining, Palisade experienced a slow decline, which started in the late 1880s due to the decreasing productivity of Eureka's mines.

  In 1910, a major flood swept through the small canyon, destroying a large portion of the town and damaging the train tracks (they were rebuilt). A few years later, fire accelerated the town's demise so that by the time the Eureka and Palisade Railroad ceased operations in 1938, Palisade was already a ghost town.

  Driving over the hill that drops into Palisade Canyon, the first things you see are a handful of mobile homes on the opposite hillside.

  On closer look, however, you can find the remains of about ten structures in the thick sagebrush and tall grass just above the river’s shore. Most are simply the ruins of crude miner's shacks with concrete and brick walls and, in many cases, collapsed wooden and sod roofs.

  Wandering through the line-up of partial buildings and foundations, you find other reminders of the town, including the rusted hulk of an old car and other metal scraps. On a hillside above the former main part of the town, you can also spot two tall walls of what must have been an impressive structure.

  The cemetery tells the most about Palisade. Still in remarkably good condition because it is maintained by descendents of the town's first residents, the burial ground contains both substantial marble monuments as well as some fine examples of wooden markers.

  Of course, as with any Nevada ghost town, be careful not to touch or disturb anything—most of the community is private property.

  In addition to the historic remains of the town, the other reason to visit Palisade is the scenery. The area takes its name from the dramatic cliffs located directly east of the town.

  The Humboldt Palisades, as the cliffs are called, were named for similar cliffs on the Hudson River in New York. A dirt road parallel to the train tracks leads into the 12-mile-long canyon.

  Palisade is located in Northeastern Nevada, about 11 miles south of Carlin. To reach it, travel 9.5 miles south on State Route 278, then 1.5 miles on a marked dirt road.

Nothing Trivial About Reno's History

 

  For a city its size, Reno has been associated with a remarkable number of fascinating stories, celebrities and facts. Few cities can claim to have been featured in so many classic songs (the aptly-named “Reno” by Bruce Springsteen and “All the Way to Reno” by R.E.M.), films (“The Misfits,” starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe) and books (“The Motel Life,” by Reno-born author, Willy Vlautin).

  With that in mind, the following are a handful of celebrity trivia questions and answers related to the Biggest Little City in the World:

  Q: What former Miss Nevada starred in a popular 1960s TV show set on a deserted island with a group of wacky castaways?

  A: The actress was Dawn Wells, who played “Mary Ann” on the show “Gilligan's Island.” Wells, born in Reno on October 18, 1938, was Miss Nevada in 1959. She died on December 30, 2020 of COVID-related causes and was buried in Reno’s Mountain View Cemetery.

   Q: What famous 1910 boxing match, the first to be billed as “The Fight of Century,” took place on the corner of Fourth and Toana streets in Reno?

   A: This bout pitted John Arthur “Jack” Johnson, the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, against James J. “Jim” Jeffries, the former undefeated heavyweight champion seeking to regain the title he had voluntary vacated in 1904. The fight gained national attention because of its racial overtones. Johnson easily defeated Jeffries in a 15-round bout (scheduled to last 45 rounds) on July 4, 1910.

  Q: What Baseball Hall-of-Fame pitcher was married to the daughter of Nevada's lone Congressman in 1914?

  A: Walter “Big Train” Johnson was the ballplayer. Johnson, who pitched for the Washington Senators from 1907 to 1927 and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, married Hazel Lee Roberts, daughter of Congressman Edwin Ewing Roberts of Reno, on June 24, 1914.

  Q: What former member of Britain's House of Lords was born in Reno, Nevada?

  A: The Nevada-born Lord was Garret Graham Wellesley, the seventh “Earl Cowley.” Wellesley's father, Christian Arthur Wellesley, moved to Nevada in the 1930s to obtain a divorce (not available at the time in England). The senior Lord Wellesley enjoyed Northern Nevada and, after obtaining his divorce, built an 18th century-style English estate at the south end of Washoe Valley. He remarried to a Reno woman, Mary Elsie May, and they had two children, both born in Reno: Garret and a younger brother, Tim. In the mid-1970s, Garret Wellesley, then living in San Francisco, inherited his father's title, which included the family seat in Britain's House of Lords. He relocated to England, where he resided until his death in 2016.

   Q: What U.S. military hero is the namesake for the city of Reno?

   A: While some believe Reno is named after Major Marcus Reno, who was General George Custer’s second-in-command at the Battle of Little Big Horn (and who many blamed for Custer’s defeat), the city was actually named for General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed during the Civil War at the Battle of South Mountain, Maryland, in 1862. The name was bestowed on the railroad settlement previously known as Lake’s Crossing, by Charles Crocker, superintendent of the Central Pacific Railroad and his partners.

   Q: What famous Johnny Cash song included the line: “But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die?”

   A: The song was “Folsom Prison Blues,” which Cash recorded in 1956. In a later Rolling Stone interview, Cash said he wrote the line after envisioning “the worst reason . . . for killing another person.”