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.”
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