Valmy: Small in Stature But Big in Stories

 

At first glance, the tiny enclave of Valmy, located about 35 miles east of Winnemucca, doesn’t appear to consist of much more than a large service station with an RV park. But there’s far more to its story.

A railroad stop was established here in the 1890s to provide water and fuel for passing trains. Due to the presence of springs in the area, it had long been the site of many battles between rival Shoshone tribal units sparring over the water. In fact, because of those skirmishes, it was named after a famous French battle site.

Records indicate that a post office opened at another nearby railroad stop called Stone House in 1890 but was relocated to Valmy in 1915. Sometime in the early 20^th century, a small gas station, store, bus stop, and post office opened on the site.

In 1932, an entrepreneurial 19-year-old named Eugene DiGrazia purchased what he described in a 1987 article in the Los Angeles Times as “the whole works” from a school teacher for $1,800. He later purchased 140 surrounding the complex for $2,100.

DiGrazia told Charles Hillinger of the Times that when he purchased the property it “had only one pump and in the beginning cars and trucks were few and far between. A narrow two-lane road went through here.

“Gas sold for 25 cents a gallon. I paid 19 1/2 cents for it . . . bread sold for 10 cents a loaf, milk 10 cents a gallon,” he continued. He said his most regular customers were miners working nearby diggings who rode into the settlement on burros.

“President Herbert Hoover stopped here in 1940. He was interested in a gold mine near here,” DiGrazia told Hiliinger. “He bought gas, bought some candy and used the out-house. He stood around and talked for a while.” 

For the next 58 years, DiGrazia and his wife, Julia, operated what was known as the “Valmy Auto Court.” Over the years, the property expanded to include a small café called “Gene’s Golden Grill,” a six-unit motel, and two trailer parks on 63 acres.

By the 1980s, after a large coal-powered power plant was opened a few miles away, the trailer park was home to nearly 100 people, most either gold miners, DiGrazia’s employees, or workers at the power plant.

DiGrazia, affectionately called the Mayor of Valmy, served as postmaster, fire chief, and just about every other civic job in the tiny community. He even established the Valmy Water Co. to provide free water to residents from a 10,000-gallon galvanized iron tank that was built over a well next to the railroad tracks. It had originally been used to water steam locomotives.

Valmy probably had its most significant brush with fame in the early 1980s after rock icon Bruce Springsteen posed for an album cover photo in front of Valmy’s 1930s-style gas station/general store (it was used on the cover of a live album released in Britain). For years, a copy of the album cover signed by Springsteen hung on a wall in the store.

Over the years, DiGrazia was the subject of countless newspaper and magazine articles. For many years, he wrote a column about the comings and goings in the community, titled, “The Valmy Badger,” which appeared in The Battle Mountain Bugle newspaper.

After DiGrazia’s death in 1990, Valmy was sold and the old classic wooden Shell station was replaced with a more contemporary fabricated building. While the charm of the old place is gone, you can still get gas and food in Valmy—or park your mobile home or mail a letter. Julia DiGrazia moved to Reno, where she died in 2002.

 

Where It All Began: Reno's Riverside Hotel

Much of Reno’s early history is intertwined with the city’s Riverside Hotel.

Still a majestic sight, the six-story brick structure with Gothic terra cotta decorations was built in 1926-27, then expanded in 1931 and again in 1950-51.

But the importance of the Riverside site goes back much farther. In 1859, Charles William Fuller set up a trading post and small inn on the land south of the Truckee River to cater to the prospectors and other folks heading to what became known as the Comstock Lode.

In 1861, a road was built from the Truckee Meadows to the Comstock and Fuller built a toll bridge adjacent to his trading post, which became known as Fuller’s Crossing. Later that year, he sold his holdings to Myron C. Lake, who renamed it Lake’s Crossing.

Between 1862 and 1868, Lake grew wealthy off his toll bridge, which had been granted a ten-year monopoly by the Nevada Territorial Legislature. In 1869, he erected on the site a more substantial inn, the three-story Lake House, which included a large barn and stables.

In 1868, Lake persuaded the Central Pacific Railroad, which was building the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, to establish a town on his land north of the Truckee River, which became the city of Reno.

Following Lake’s death in 1884, the Lake House became the property of Florence Thompson and her husband, William Thompson. Florence was the daughter of Jane Lake, Myron Lake’s first wife, and Myron Lake’s step-daughter.

By the late 1880s, the Thompsons had renovated the Lake House and renamed it the Riverside Hotel. In 1896, they sold the hotel, which, by 1906 had become the property of its manager, Harry Gosse. Between 1901 and 1906, Gosse had overseen the construction of a new, castle-like Riverside Hotel, built around the older, wooden lodging house.

In 1924, the Riverside burned down and the site was acquired by George Wingfield, a Reno banker and political broker, who was considered one of the state’s richest individuals.

Recognizing Reno’s growing popularity as a place to obtain an easy divorce, Wingfield hired Nevada’s most well-known architect, Frederic J. DeLongchamps to design the current version of the Riverside Hotel to house divorce-seekers waiting to meet the state’s residency requirements in order to obtain their decree.

The original hotel boasted ground floor storefronts for businesses that would cater to those staying in the hotel (most are now bricked over). The hotel also had a casino (expanded in 1950) as well as a bank, beauty parlor and gourmet dining room.

Additionally, it included 40 corner suites with kitchen facilities and connecting rooms for children and servants, along with 60 single rooms for shorter stays. Each apartment was furnished with individual refrigerators.

After other jurisdictions loosened their divorce requirements and Reno began to lose its luster as the “Divorce Capital of the World,” the Riverside slid into a short of sleepy existence through the 1960s and 70s (Wingfield sold it in 1955).

In 1986, the hotel was no longer profitable and closed for good. After standing vacant for more than a decade, it was purchased in 1997 by the city of Reno, which partnered with the Sierra Arts Foundation and Artspace, a company specializing in renovating historic structures, and converted into artist lofts.

With the remodeling completed in 2000, the hotel offers 35 lofts with open floor plans that are rented to artists at modest prices. Additionally, it has a gallery where Riverside residents can exhibit their work and space leased to a popular local restaurant (Wild River Grille).

A good source of information about the Riverside is Jack Harpster’s book, “The Genesis of Reno: The History of the Riverside Hotel and the Virginia Street Bridge,” published in 2016 by the University of Nevada Press.

Goldfield's Famed Fight for the Ages

Marker commemorating Gans-Nelson fight in Goldfield

The longest prizefight in Nevada history was a 42-round marathon between middleweight boxers, Joe “The Old Master” Gans and Oscar “Battling” Nelson, who was also known as “The Durable Dane,” in the mining town of Goldfield on September 3, 1906.

The fight came about when a canny local saloon owner and entrepreneur, George Lewis “Tex” Rickard, decided that booming Goldfield, which had become the largest city in Nevada, should host a championship prizefight to help cement its status as a promising, growing metropolis and, not coincidentally, persuade any out-of-towners with the means to invest in Goldfield.

Working with a couple of other, less reputable promotors, George Graham Rice and Larry Sullivan, Rickard formed the Goldfield Athletic Club for the purpose of attracting a big-time fight.

Rickard proved to be up to the task, raising sufficient funds for a purse ($33,500) and overseeing the construction of an 8,000-seat arena for the fight on a site that today is a litter-strewn lot off U.S. 95 in the center of Goldfield.

The fight had an additional element that made it of interest in many quarters—Gans, the world middleweight champion, was black while Nelson was white.

According to historian Richard O. Davies, author of “The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip,” Gans, unlike black heavyweight boxers who could not get fights with white boxers, did not apparently face the same institutional racism because “the symbolism of masculine supremacy was not in play as with the heavyweights.”

That did not, however, keep him from having to accept a smaller purse for the fight than his white opponent. Nelson was guaranteed $22,500 while Gans would receive $11,000.

Additionally, while the amiable Gans was generally viewed favorably and was the betting favorite, that didn’t prevent a local newspaper, “The Goldfield News,” from noting that white boxing fans were in the uncomfortable position of “wishing to see a Negro defeat a white man.”

The 31-year-old Gans had fought a large number of opponents during his career, earning the nickname, “The Old Master,” because of his experience and technical knowledge of the sport. He was polite and affable, which was in stark contrast to Nelson, who was a bit obnoxious.

Seven years younger than Gans, Nelson was known as more of a brawler. He had a reputation for illegal head butts and low blows, and was pushy and rude in the days leading up to the fight.

An interesting wrinkle to the fight was that it was to be a “fight to the finish,” although should it go 45 three-minute rounds, the referee would stop it and declare a winner.

On the day of the fight, the two boxers climbed into the ring before a full crowd of 8,000. Like the 1897 Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight in Carson City, the bout was being filmed for later viewing.

In the early rounds, Gans put on a boxing clinic, landing numerous jabs and deftly escaping Nelson’s punches. But an hour into the fight, he began to tire and his punches began to display less power.

Meanwhile the seemingly indefatigable Nelson continued to tie up Gans and avoid any semblance of a knockout punch. He also repeatedly head-butted Gans and landed a few punches that the crowd saw as being below the belt.

In the 33^rd round, Gans broke a bone in his right hand after landing a punch to the challenger’s legendary thick skull. According to observers, he hid the injury by pretending to have hurt an ankle.

As the fight continued into the 40^th round, both men were exhausted, sunburned, bruised, and bloodied. In round 42, Gans managed to land a powerful left hook, which Nelson seemed to shake off. In retaliation, Nelson swung low and landed a punch to Gans’ groin, which knocked the champion to the canvas, in clear agony.

The crowd screamed at Nelson’s illegal punch and after a moment, the referee declared Gans the winner by disqualification. Davies noted that many post fight analysts believed Gans’ left hook in the 42^nd round had convinced Nelson he couldn’t win fairly, so, in desperation, he unleashed the low blow.

The fight did what it sought to do. The town received a big economic boost during the fight weekend and, at least for a little while, Goldfield was on the map.

Famous Firsts Established at Carson City's Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight

Nevada has had a long relationship with legal prizefighting, which can be traced to the heavyweight bout between two men, James “Gentleman Jim” Corbett and Robert “Ruby Robert” Fitzsimmons in Carson City in 1897.

That first legal bout was the result of a number of serendipitous factors that all came together to make it happen. When talk of a prizefight began to pick up momentum in 1895-96, the biggest problem was that boxing was illegal in the U.S.

At the same time, the state of Nevada was experiencing a crushing economic depression. The mining and ranching industries were collapsing and the state needed a new source of potential revenue.

Against that backdrop, Nevada approved legal “glove contests” in January 1897 and almost immediately promotor Dan Stuart, who had pushed for passage of the law, announced plans for a heavyweight bout in Carson City on March 17, 1897—St. Patrick’s Day.

The fight represented a number of “firsts.” It was Nevada’s first legal prizefight. It was also the first prizefight ever recorded on film for later viewing in movie theaters. It was also the first prizefight using the then-new Queensberry rules requiring boxers to wear five-ounce padded gloves and for rounds to be held to three minutes, separated by a minute of rest.

Once he had the go-ahead for his bout, Stuart erected a 17,000-seat wooden amphitheater on the corner of Musser and Pratt streets in Carson City. At the time, the city had a population of less than 3,000.

While Nevada had decided to legalize prizefighting, the sport was still vilified throughout most of the country. Newspapers began referring to the action as “Nevada’s Disgrace” and religious leaders condemned the state for its loose morals, which also included toleration of casino-style gambling and brothels.

As for the fighters, Corbett set up a training camp at Shaw’s Springs (now known as the Carson Hot Springs, while Fitzsimmons trained at a place called Cook’s Ranch, located about three miles from town.

Stuart hoped that the popular Corbett, born in San Francisco, would draw a good number of his Bay Area supporters to the fight. Fitzsimmons, who hailed from New Zealand, was less well-known but had a far more extensive fight record. Goosing expectations was the fact that Corbett and Fitzsimmons genuinely did not like each other.

On the day of the fight, it became clear that the arena was far bigger than the paid crowd of some four to six thousand who paid to watch the bout.

Despite its less-than-anticipated size, the crowd was enthusiastic, according to newspaper accounts of the fight, with most supporting Corbett, the former title-holder.

The reports indicate that Corbett appeared to be the victor in the early rounds, using his technical skills to mark Fitzsimmons face with several cuts. In the sixth round, Corbett landed an uppercut to Fitzsimmons’ jaw followed by right hand to his nose, which caused him to stagger.

Fitzsimmons, however, managed to remain standing through the rest of the round and a tiring Corbett failed to follow up in the next round.

The two traded blows during the next seven rounds, with the fatigued Corbett having little power behind his punches, and Fitzsimmons waiting for the right opportunity to strike. It came in the 14^th round, when Corbett raised his gloves to protect his face, after being hit on the neck, and Fitzsimmons followed with a strong punch to Corbett’s body, just under his heart.

Known as the “solar plexus punch,” the blow caused Corbett to crumple into the ropes and let out a loud moan. Fitzsimmons landed a second punch to Corbett’s stomach and the former champ fell to his knees.

According to historian Richard O. Davies, in his excellent book, “The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip,” Corbett was so immobilized, he could barely breathe, that he couldn’t rise to his feet and the referee counted him out.

While Corbett’s supporters were disappointed about the outcome, the event, despite the smaller crowd, signaled that legal boxing had a future in the Silver State.

Reno's Overlooked Hillside Cemetery

Tucked into a residential neighborhood of apartment complexes and fraternity houses near the University of Nevada, Reno campus is a patch of land that looks very much out of place.

The roughly five-acre site, which overlooks downtown Reno, is known as the Hillside Cemetery and it is Reno’s oldest final resting grounds, having been first used in the late 1860s (and formally established as a private cemetery in 1875).

According to news accounts, the first person to be buried on the site was Menerva Morton, who died in 1868.

Among the others interred at Hillside include a number of pioneer Reno figures including George Peckham (Peckham Lane is named after him) and George Williams Cassidy, a former journalist and U.S. Congressman from Nevada (1881-1885).

From 1879 to about 1959, Hillside remained a more-or-less active concern that was originally owned by the Wiltshire Sanders and later by his heirs. Apparently, lots in the cemetery were sold to the individual families while ownership of the overall site remained with Sanders.

Records indicate there were a total of 190 lots, which could host as many as 18 individuals on each lot. More than 1,400 people are believed to have been buried in the cemetery.

In about 1905, Wiltshire Sanders turned over ownership of the cemetery to his wife, Margaret Sanders, who, according to court records, continued to sell lot deeds until 1920, when the city passed an ordinance prohibiting such sales. After that date, only members of the families already owning lots could continue to inter their deceased at the cemetery.

In the 1930s, the Sanders family moved away from Reno and the cemetery was abandoned (except for any maintenance efforts performed by the families of those buried there).

By the 1960s, the cemetery was officially an eyesore, used as a dumping ground for trash and old automobiles. Grave markers were broken or stolen and part of the site was used a parking lot by fraternity members living nearby.

In the 1970s, the property began to attract attention from local developers, who purchased the Sanders’ family interests, who wanted to relocate the bodies in order to build apartments, fraternities, or dormitories on the site.

In 1978, the property was donated to UNR, which sought to get the site approved for student housing but abandoned the effort due to public outcry.

In 1985, the university sold the site to Sierra Memorial Services, which, also wanted to use the land for other purposes. In 2001, it persuaded the Nevada Legislature to approve legislation allowing it to relocate the bodies since the cemetery had no financial mechanism for being a viable enterprise.

Since then, Hillside Cemetery has been in a kind of limbo with preservation advocates and descendants of those buried there successfully beating back efforts to disinter the bodies so the site can be repurposed for other uses.

In 2016, the Hillside Cemetery Preservation Foundation was created to restore, preserve and protect the site. The group has a website explaining its goals (http://hcpfoundation,squarespace.com).

Today, visitors can still wander around the fenced cemetery site, which is open (for now) only to family members due to past vandalism problems.

Despite the decades of neglect and vandalism, several impressive headstones and markers remain. They illustrate the significance of the cemetery to Reno’s history, reminders that this was once the city’s most prominent burial grounds where many of the community’s most important figures were laid to rest.

Fishing and Recreation Found at Wild Horse Reservoir

During the 1930s, the famed Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), a Depression-era government work program embarked on a staggering number of public works projects in the state of Nevada. One of the more impressive was Wild Horse Dam in northern Elko County.

The dam was built in 1937 and behind its concrete walls formed Wild Horse Reservoir, a massive pond of water that covered what was once known as Owyhee Meadows. The name, Wild Horse, derived from the large number of wild horses that roamed the area at the time.

Beginning in 1869, Owyhee Meadows was a stop on the Elko-Idaho Toll Road, according to Nevada historian Shawn Hall.

As an aside, the CCC reportedly completed some 59 projects across the state of Nevada, which was the largest recipient of CCC assistance. According to historians, the CCC employed nearly 31,000 men during the 1930s in Nevada, largely benefiting from having so much land owned by the federal government (some 85 percent) and as a result of having two long-serving, influential U.S. Senators (Key Pittman and Patrick McCarran) at the time.

Wild Horse Dam stands 87-feet high and has a width of 458 feet. The reservoir is fed by the Owyhee River, a tributary of the Snake River that flows through northern Nevada, southwestern Idaho, and southeastern Oregon. The river stretches some 280 miles from north of Elko to the Snake River at a point near Nyssa, Oregon.

The water stored behind the dam, which was reconstructed and enlarged in 1969, is used for agriculture on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation (the dam was built under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs). When completely filled, the water surface area of Wild Horse is 2,830 acres and contains some 73,500 acre-feet of water.

In addition to its irrigation uses, Wild Horse, which is open throughout the year, is a state recreation area that serves as a popular fishing site (rainbow and German brown trout, small mouth bass, yellow perch, and catfish can be found).

In the winter, Wild Horse is one of the coldest spots in the state, which makes it ideal for ice-fishing and ice-skating.

About 32 miles north of the reservoir is the community of Owyhee, heart of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. The name, Owyhee, was bestowed on the area in 1819 by three Hawaiian trappers working for the Hudson Bay Company. Originally intended to be the phonetic spelling of “Hawaii,” the pronunciation was corrupted by later white settlers.

The Duck Valley Reservation is home to both Shoshone and Northern Paiute people, who were relocated there in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1863, the Shoshone or Newe people signed the Ruby Valley Treaty of Peace and Friendship, but the federal government did very little to live up to the terms of the agreement.

The tribe, however, persisted, attempting to establish Duck Valley as their new home. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes finally signed an order guaranteeing the land to the tribe but promises to provide needed goods and other assistance were unfilled (and diverted) due to corrupt Indian agents.

The situation slightly improved in the early 1880s, when a new agent arrived, and the town of Owyhee became more established. A school was built in 1881 and later in the decade Northern Paiutes were added to the reservation. A post office opened in Owyhee in 1899 and telephone service began in 1904.

Disputes with local ranchers over water rights became an ongoing issue during the next decades, with the situation only resolved when the Wild Horse Reservoir was built in 1937.

Today, Owyhee is a largely agricultural community with a population of about 1,000 people.

The Wild Horse State Recreation Area offers a campground with 34 sites that each include a table, shade, fire pit and a camping pad. While there are no hook-ups, the campground has restrooms and showers year-round and there are centrally-located water faucets and a dump station in the summer.

Those looking to spend a day at the reservoir will find a picnic area with tables and grills as well as a boat ramp next to the day use beach.

For more information go to: http://parks.nv/gov/parks/wild-horse.

The Forty Mile Desert Offered the Greatest Challenges for Emigrant Trail Travelers

“Expect to find the worst desert you ever saw and then find it worse than you expected.”—John Wood, 1850 Diary

From the late 1840s to the late 1860s, travelers on the Emigrant Trail through Nevada, also known as the Central Overland Trail, endured a months-long journey through often inhospitable terrain in their quest to reach California.

By all accounts, the worst part of the trip was the stretch of barren, alkali wasteland located west of today’s community of Lovelock, which was known as the Forty Mile Desert.

The seemingly endless desert trek began just past the Humboldt Sink, where the Humboldt River flowed into a dry lakebed. At this point emigrants had two choices; continue west across the desert to reach the Truckee River or head southwest, across the desert until they encountered the Carson River (around the location of the area that is now known as Ragtown).

Regardless of the route, in between were forty miles of salt flats with little grass—and very little water.

In dozens of accounts of the time, travelers wrote extensively of the challenges. They wrote of blistering heat during the day, animals—and people—dying of thirst, and of often having to discard nearly every possession along the way.

To minimize the difficulties, most waited until early evening to depart and continued through the night in order to avoid the daytime heat. And, because the trip took several days, they would attempt to rest and sleep during the heat of the day.

Compounding the situation was the fact that most travelers had to wait until late spring and early summer to begin their trek from Missouri to California to take advantage of warmer and better traveling weather, so they typically arrived at the desert in August or September.

Additionally, they had just completed more than 300 miles of following the winding Humboldt River across Nevada, which offered poor water and, as the wagon trains increased, fewer places with good grasslands for animals.

By the time that most of the travelers and their surviving animals reached the desert, both were stressed out and in poor physical condition.

In his diary, emigrant John Wood captured the mood of many travelers when he wrote: “All are preparing and dreading to cross, by the worst desert we have met yet. They, perhaps, would not mind it, and neither would I, if we had plenty to eat; but here are hundreds already lamenting their anticipated death, and suffering on the burning plain.”

Even famed writer Mark Twain, who crossed the desert in 1861 via stagecoach, noted: “It was a dreary pull and a long and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step!”

According to an historical marker located at the edge of the Forty Mile Desert (at the Interstate 80 Rest Area at its intersection with U.S.Highway 95), a survey in 1850 indicated that even that early in its usage the routes had resulted in 1,061 dead mules, almost 5,000 horses, 3,750 cattle, and 953 graves.

One of the best ways to view the Forty Mile Desert is by traveling on U.S. 95, after it branches south from Interstate 80 (about 17 miles west of Lovelock). Directly to the west of the highway are the sandy, alkali flats that once challenged so many travelers.

If you pull off on one of the handful of dirt roads that lead into the desert and park, you can (once the road traffic disperses) hear the whistling wind across the flats and imagine what it must have been like to have to trudge across this forsaken landscape, dreaming of a better life at the end of your journey.

A good place to learn more about the Forty Mile Desert is the Churchill County Museum and Archives (http://ccmuseum.org/) in Fallon, which has a nice display of artifacts that have been found in the desert.

Additionally, a good book with information about the desert is Harold Curran’s “Fearful Crossing,” available at many local bookstores or online.