Hit Hard By Earthquake, Wells Survives

 In 2008, the historic railroad town of Wells, located on Interstate 80 about 45 miles east of Elko, was changed forever. That day a devastating earthquake struck the community of about 1,200 people, damaging many of the town’s most historic buildings.

  While several remain standing, the loss was major as Wells is one of the oldest settlements in northeastern Nevada, with historic ties to the Emigrant Trail, the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad line, and the development of the Interstate Highway system.

  Wells, originally known as Humboldt Wells, traces its beginnings to the first travelers across Nevada (or the Great Unknown as it was then called). In the late 1840s to early 1870s, travelers on the California Trail found lush meadows and clear natural springs in the Wells area, which was an important rest stop for the pioneers.

  Despite the good grass and water, Humboldt Wells didn’t amount to much until the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad line in 1869.

  The railroad selected Humboldt Wells for the location of a water tower and parked a boxcar adjacent to the tracks to serve as a freight and passenger depot. A little later, the site became a division point for the railroad and a small settlement began to develop.

  Within a few years, Humboldt Wells (the name was shortened to Wells in the 1870s) had a business district parallel to the railroad tracks, a school, and a population of about 300 people.

  In the late 19th century, the development of mines in the region, particularly at Cherry Creek (about 95 miles south), spurred moderate development and growth in Wells, which served as a freight point for shipping the ore.

  The construction of the Western Pacific Railroad and the Oregon Short Line, which passed through Wells, provided longer term economic stability to the town, which incorporated as a city in 1927.

  In recent years, as railroads either closed down or bypassed the community, Wells has evolved into a crossroads community because of its location at the intersection of Interstate 80 and U.S. 93.

  Today, Wells has about 1,000 residents. As a result of changes in transportation modes, from the railroad to automobiles, the commercial center of Wells has shifted from along the tracks to adjacent to the highways.

  The result is that the historic downtown was slowly abandoned—this is where much of the earthquake damage occurred—and the town’s newer development has occurred adjacent to the interstate.

  One of the survivors of the earthquake was the historic El Rancho Casino, built in 1949 and once one of the finest hotels in the state. While the building was damaged during the quake, the city and historic preservationists have embarked on a plan to renovate the structure into a community center with commercial businesses.

  About 14 miles northwest of Wells is the site of Metropolis, a ghost town that owed its existence to farming rather than mining.

  Foundations, sidewalks, a cemetery and an impressive arch that was once part of a two-story schoolhouse are all that remain.

  For more information about Wells, contact the Wells Chamber of Commerce, www.wellsnevada.com.

From Stagecoach Stop to Railroad Station: The Story of Currie, Nevada

 

Goshute Merchantile in Currie

While there’s not much to see in the tiny enclave of Currie, located about an hour south of Wells via U.S. 93, the community has a rich history that dates back to the 1870s, when a freight and stage stop, called Bellinger’s Spring, was established there because of the presence of water.

  In the 1880s, Joseph H. Currie started a ranch at nearby Nelson Creek. In 1906, when the Northern Nevada Railway started building its connecting line between the rich copper mines near Ely and the Southern Pacific Railroad near Cobre, the railroad located a depot at the halfway point, which became the start of a small community named Currie after the largest local rancher.

  The first significant business to open in Currie was the two-story Currie Hotel, which was owned by Currie. Within a few months, a post office opened inside of the hotel (Currie was postmaster) and a second hotel, the Steptoe, was constructed.

  The new settlement soon became an important transportation and livestock hub for the region. In 1908, a telegraph office opened in Currie, followed by a general store and a one-room schoolhouse, which was expanded two years later.

  Currie peaked in about 1910 when the town saw the opening of another store, a saloon, and a railway section house and turntable. When the road from Wells to Ely was paved in the 1920s, Currie gained a gas station and store.

  But Currie began a slow decline after 1941, when the railroad discontinued passenger and mail service at Currie due to a lack of business. During the period between 1906 and 1941, about 4.6 million passengers passed through Currie on the Nevada Northern Railway.

  Nevada Northern Railway freight trains continued running through Currie until Ely’s copper smelters closed on June 20, 1983 and the railroad was shut down a day later. The post office, which had relocated to the general store in the late teens, closed in 1971.

  Today, the original Currie depot remains standing as does the Currie Hotel. A handful of other buildings and foundations from the town’s early years, including the old schoolhouse, can still be seen.

  The town still has about 20 residents, most of whom either work at a gas station and store that is still in operation, an RV park, or a highway maintenance station. There is also an old abandoned dirt airfield located about two miles from the town.

  For more information about Currie, check out Shawn Hall’s two Elko County books, “Connecting the West: Historic Railroad Stops and Stage Stations in Elko County, Nevada” and “Old Heart of Nevada: Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Elko County.” Both are published by the University of Nevada Press and are available via online vendors or from the press.

  For additional information about Currie and some of its past residents, check out the Elko County Rose Garden historical website, http://elkorose.schopine.com/currie.html.

A Place Called Contact

Housing in Contact, Nevada in the 1930s

  One of the more unusual names found on a Nevada map is the tiny community of Contact, located about 15 miles south of the Idaho border on U.S. Highway 93. The name is said to derive from mining jargon.

  While today, not much remains of Contact—a fire destroyed most of the town’s buildings in 1942—once upon a time it was a fairly thriving mining community.

  According to the late (and great) Elko County historian Howard Hickson, gold and silver ore were discovered in the area as early as the 1870s but it wasn’t until the late 1890s that mining began in earnest. By April 1897, nearly 200 miners were working in the area.

  Despite construction of a smelter that year, the mines were not profitable and by 1900 less than 100 miners were still working the ground there. Things began to pick up again in 1905 and by 1915, a settlement had cropped up that had a 35-room hotel, several saloons, a barbershop, a post office, schools, restaurants, a general store and even a newspaper (the Contact Miner).

  Hickson has written that Contact seemed to experience its most flush times when the United States was at war. He pointed to the fact that from 1916 to 1918, production peaked, and then again from 1942 to 1946.

  The value in keeping Contact’s mines operating during wars was that while the local mines produced some 742 ounces of gold and 58,713 ounces of silver, the real money was in the 3.3 million pounds of copper, 324,233 pounds of lead and 18,400 pounds of zinc that were mined between 1916 and 1958 (when the mines were finally shut down for good).

  Additionally, in 1979 the Los Angeles Times noted that during Prohibition, the town was the largest supplier of bootleg whiskey to Idaho. Hickson said that during a town reunion that year, one former resident claimed there were six moonshine operations in Contact in 1917 that operated until the repeal of Prohibition in 1932.

  The fire in 1942 devasted the town, which was already severely depressed. Flames consumed the store, hotel, restaurants and bars, a service station, a church, and many homes.

  Today, only a few residents still live in Contact, most employed by the Nevada Department of Transportation, which has a maintenance station there.

  Wandering through the sagebrush and high grass, you can still find a few old wooden homes and foundations of some of the stores and other businesses destroyed by the fire.

  Records indicate that the Contact area still has several hundred active mining claims, including the Contact Copper Project, a copper-oxide project that has not yet been developed.

  A few miles north of Contact is Jackpot, a thriving hotel-casino resort community with about 1,200 residents. Jackpot traces its beginnings to 1954, when Idaho outlawed gambling and two Idaho slot machine operators, “Cactus Pete” Piersanti and Don French, moved across the state line to establish two gaming businesses called Cactus Pete’s and the Horseshu Club.

  The town was originally named “Horseshu,” after one of the properties, but Cactus Pete’s objected, so the Elko County Commissioners formally named it “Unincorporated Town No.1.” In 1959, both properties agreed on the name, “Jackpot.”

On the Trail of George Wingfield

 

Wingfield's Reno National Bank on the corner of Virginia and Second streets

  In the 1920s and 30s, banker George Wingfield was the richest person in the Silver State, a man who was sometimes called “The King of Nevada.”

  While today it’s largely historians or old-timers who recall his enormous influence on the state’s economy and politics, a handful of places associated with Wingfield remain standing.

  George Wingfield was born on August 16, 1876 near Fort Smith, Arkansas but raised in Lake County, Oregon, near the Oregon-Nevada border. Wingfield’s father operated a cattle ranch and, after completing the eighth grade in Lakeview, the younger Wingfield began working as a cowhand, a sometime gambler, and occasional horse jockey.

  In 1896, Wingfield moved to Nevada, first to Winnemucca, where he apparently befriended banker George S. Nixon. Two years later, he moved to Golconda, where he operated a saloon, races horses, gambled, and prospected.

  In 1901, Wingfield relocated to the mining boomtown of Tonopah, where he, again, made his living as a gambler and, with his winnings, invested in real estate. A year later, he began to act as a representative for Nixon, who was looking for investment opportunities, particularly in mining claims.

  The Wingfield-Nixon partnership really took root after 1904, when Wingfield headed to the new mining boomtown of Goldfield. There, the two successfully invested in mining claims, businesses, banking and real estate opportunities.

  Within a few years, both were multi-millionaires, who controlled nearly all of the mining operations in Goldfield. It’s been estimated that Wingfield was worth between $20 million and $30 million by the time he was 30 years old.

  In 1909, Wingfield, sensing that Reno was soon to become the largest and most important city in the state, relocated to the Biggest Little City. He would remain living in Reno until his death in 1959.

  At that time, he and Nixon, who became a U.S. Senator from Nevada, ended their partnership, with Nixon taking control of the banks and Wingfield assuming sole control of their mining, real estate and other investments.

  With Nixon’s death in 1912, Wingfield purchased Nixon’s banking interests and began buying up many of the other banks in the state. By 1932, he owned 12 banks and controlled more than half of all the deposits in the state. He also owned two hotels in Reno (the Golden, purchased in 1915, and the Riverside, which he built in 1927), ranching operations throughout the state, a thoroughbred horse farm, and the state’s only bonding company.

  In the early 1930s, the start of the Great Depression, Wingfield’s banks began to suffer massive losses. By 1935, he had lost a substantial part of his holdings and filed for bankruptcy protection.

  But later that year, a good friend, Noble Getchell, a mine owner and state senator from Lander County, invited Wingfield to partner with him in developing a new mine near Golconda. The mine proved to be everything that Getchell and Wingfield hoped and by 1941 it was the largest gold producing mine in the state and within a few years (after World War II) Wingfield was again a wealthy man.

  Retracing Wingfield’s steps across Nevada, one can still find places closely associated with him. One of the most impressive is the still-standing four-story Goldfield Hotel, which he constructed in 1908.

  The hotel, in the center of the former mining town, has been closed since the end of World War II, although several more recent owners have unsuccessfully attempted to restore and reopen it.

  Another Wingfield touch-point is the former Reno National Bank building at 206 North Virginia Street in Reno. Built in 1915 by Wingfield and designed by famed Reno architect Frederic DeLongchamps, the building became part of the Harrah’s resort property in the 1980s.

  More recently, it has been vacant with new owners still determining what to do with the distinctive Classical Revival structure.

  The Riverside Hotel at 17 South Virginia Street in Reno, built by Wingfield in 1927, also remains intact. No longer a hotel, it was renovated and converted to artist lofts in 2000. The Golden Hotel, however, was destroyed in a fire in 1962.

  Wingfield Park, which sits in the middle of the Truckee River in downtown Reno, was built on land donated to the city by Wingfield. Another of his longtime properties, Spanish Springs Ranch, is gone, having been replaced after 1995 by a 400-home subdivision (Redhawk at Wingfield Springs).

  The site of Wingfield longtime home at 219 Court Street in Reno is, sadly, a vacant lot. The home, once listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1912. Unfortunately, it burned down in 2001.

Mountain View Cemetery's Celebrated Dead

When actress Dawn Wells, who gained fame as the character, Mary Ann Summers in the TV show, “Gilligan’s Island,” recently died at the age of 82 of complications due to COVID-19, it was only appropriate she be laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery in Reno.

Wells, who was born in Reno, had long maintained close ties with her hometown. In fact, she was buried adjacent to her mother, Evelyn, with whom she shared a birthdate (October 18), who passed in 2004.

Mountain View Cemetery, which is part of a complex of two cemeteries commonly referred to as the Mountain View Cemeteries in Reno, has long been the final resting place for prominent Renoites. The dual burial grounds include the newer, non-denominational Mountain View Cemetery, as well as the older Masonic Memorial Gardens Cemetery, which dates to 1871, according to the Order of Masons.

Reno historian John Townley has written that Reno’s earliest cemeteries also included a Catholic burial ground on land now part of the University of Nevada, Reno, and the Hillside Cemetery on Nevada Street and University Terrace.

After the establishment of the university, the Catholic Cemetery was moved to its present location north of McCarran Boulevard while Hillside Cemetery, now largely abandoned, is still there, looking out of place as it sits adjacent to fraternity houses and apartment buildings.

The present boundaries of Masonic Memorial Gardens appear to have been established in 1899, when the Masons purchased additional acreage to expand the cemetery.

Wandering the lush, green lawns of the peaceful and picturesque cemeteries, it’s easy to spot dozens of prominent names—names that seemingly half the streets in Reno were named after, including Zolezzi, Wedekind, and McCarran.

In the Masonic Cemetery, which contains many Nevada politicians, you can find the large sarcophagus memorializing U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran as well as a tall bronze bust commemorating former Nevada Governor John Sparks.

Another political figure of note there is Edwin Ewing (E.E.) Roberts, who was born in Pleasant Grove, California, in 1870, and died in Reno on December 11, 1933. 

Roberts served as Reno’s mayor from 1923-1933 and as Nevada’s Congressional representative from 1911 to 1919. He taught school in Empire, Nevada from 1897-1899, and was a successful divorce lawyer in Reno for many years.

The political figures are generally fairly easy to find because their plots were often marked with either massive granite mausoleums or, in a few cases, bronze busts, now turned green with age, which depict their likenesses.

A few of the non-political figures who found peace at the Mountain View Cemeteries include famed 19th century journalist Alfred “Alf” Doten, who was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1829 and died in Carson City, Nevada, in 1903.

Doten wrote and edited for newspapers throughout the state, including Virginia City, Gold Hill, and the mining camp of Como (above Dayton), and maintained detailed diaries over several decades that described life in early Nevada.

Additionally, Mountain View is the final resting place of Velma “Wild Horse Annie” Bronn Johnston, who was born in Reno in 1912 and died in the city in June 1977. 

Johnston was an animal rights activist, who, in the 1950s, exposed the cruel and yet legal methods used by Nevada ranchers, hunters, and “mustangers” to eradicate wild horses roaming on public lands.

She led a grass-roots campaign, which involved school children writing letters to Congress, to draw attention to the mistreatment of the horses, and sparked the passage of federal legislation banning the capture, branding, and death of wild horses on public lands.

The Mountain View and Masonic Memorial Garden cemeteries are located on Stoker Avenue, directly north of West Fourth Street in Reno.

New Book Details Devils Hole Pupfish's Struggles to Survive

Devil's Hole Pupfish (Photo courtesy of Olin Feuerbacher)

The Devils Hole Pupfish is a small blue thing. Measuring only about an inch-long and often lacking pelvic fins like other pupfish, it has been described as “tiny and wimpy.”

   But, as author Kevin C. Brown notes in his new book, “Devils Hole Pupfish: The Unexpected Survival of an Endangered Species in the Modern American West,” it is a survivor, having overcome a host of challenges during the past century and a half.

   The Devils Hole Pupfish (the apostrophe is typically left off when referring to this particular species, according to Brown), is known, scientifically, as Cyprinodon diabolis. It is a fast-moving thing that earned its name because of the way groups of them seemed to chase each other about—like a pack of puppies.

   According to Brown, part of what has made the Devils Hole Pupfish so special is that it was classified decades ago by federal scientists as a unique species and, because they only exist in Devils Hole, an endangered species, under federal law.

   Brown, in fact, devotes his first chapter to tracing the story of how the Devils Hole Pupfish was first discovered (in 1891), how the tiny fish were studied and classified by early scientists, and how it came to be formally considered a unique species.

   The latter point was particularly important when, in 1952, President Harry S. Truman added 40 acres of the Amargosa Desert known as Ash Meadows, which included Devils Hole, to Death Valley National Monument (now known as Death Valley National Park). The move provided permanent protection from development and other threats to the site.

   Brown, who writes scientific information in easy-to-understand terms, describes Devils Hole as a kind of funnel-shaped fissure or crack in the ground that is a window into a deep subterranean lake. At about 45 feet down, the opening is filled with warm water from the lake.

   The water in the 10-feet wide and 60-foot-deep crack, which is a constant 92 degrees Fahrenheit, and serves as the entire universe for the pupfish. A rock ledge in the fissure, barely below the water line, serves as its sole spawning area and the algae that grows in the hole is one of its main food sources (along with insects).

   Brown also describes the myriad threats the pupfish have faced over the decades, which range from numerous plans to pump groundwater from the area’s underground aquifer to use for agriculture and development, which would have caused drop in the water levels at Devils Hole, to disastrous government agency efforts designed to try to help the fish, which ended up actually killing them (such as in 2004 when a flash flood knocked measurement equipment into the hole and killed more than a third of the known fish population).

   The low point in the pupfish population came in 2013, when a population count found only 35 of the species still alive in the hole (just 20 years earlier there were between 400 and 500).

   Fortunately, the population has rebounded in more recent years and, according to Brown, have numbered between 135 and 185. The fish, he noted, is not yet in the clear but efforts to preserve their habitat and the species seem to be helping.

   Devils Hole is located about 25 miles south of Lathrop Wells, off Nevada State Route 373. To reach it, head south on Highway 95 through Tonopah. Lathrop Wells is located another two hours south of Tonopah on 95.

   For more information, go to: www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/devils-hole.htm.

  “Devils Hole Pupfish: The Unexpected Survival of an Endangered Species in the Modern American West,” by Kevin C. Brown is published by the University of Nevada Press and available in local bookstores or can be ordered on the University of Nevada Press website, https://www.unpress.nevada.edu/.

Eastern California's Alabama Hills Offer Incredible Scenery and Hollywood History

 

At Alabama Hills, you can walk in the footsteps of John Wayne, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Bacon, Clint Eastwood, Roy Rogers, and dozens of other film and TV stars.

   The 18,610-acre national scenic area, located about 2.5 miles west of the community of Lone Pine, California via Whitney Portal Road, is the place where more than 400 movies and countless television shows have been filmed since 1920.

   The first known cinematic effort to use the hills as a backdrop was “The Roundup,” a comedian Fatty Arbuckle silent movie filmed in 1920. More recent films and shows that incorporated the area’s mountain/high desert scenery have included “Gladiator” (2000), “Iron Man” (2008), “Django Unchained” (2012), and “Man of Steel” (2013).

   Of course, there is a reason Alabama Hills is such a popular location for directors and cinematographers: its location relatively close to Los Angeles and Hollywood and the fact it can look like so many other parts of the world.

   In those hundreds of films, the hills have been a stand-in for the Middle East, frontier Arizona and New Mexico, ancient Rome, distant deserts, and other planets. With its unusual geology, consisting of various types of volcanic rock, Alabama Hills can be repurposed to serve as a substitute for places all over the world.

   Geologists describe the distinctive boulders and rocks of the hills as weathered granite that has been shaped by wind and erosion. The result is a spectacular landscape filled with smooth, almost organic-looking boulders, arches, spires, and corridors, with the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada range in the distance.

   The geologic features of the area, including the formation of the Sierra Nevada range, were shaped by uplifting that occurred 100 million years ago.

   At about the 2.7-mile point from Lone Pine, the road forks, with Whitney Portal Road continuing directly west and Movie Road branching (on the right) in a slightly northwestern direction. The latter leads to the bulk of the best boulders and formations.

   For example, at nearly the one-mile mark (from the fork), you can hike to the east of the road into what is called the Lone Ranger Canyon. This was the place where many of the adventures of the famed TV lawman were filmed in the 1950s. A little farther to the north of the canyon is where parts of the film, Django Unchained, were shot.

   At the 1.5-mile mark (from the fork), you reach a sharp curve and to the left is the short Arch Loop trail, which leads to several of the area’s most prominent rock arches, including Mobius Arch.

   Southwest of the trail are the sites where several other well-known movies were filmed, including “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Gunga Din” (1939), and “Tremors” (1990).

   If you continue for several more miles on Movie Road, you will end up back on US 395.

   For those with more time to explore, overnight camping is available at the Tuttle Creek Campground, with 80 sites, located south of the hills via Horseshoe Meadows Road.

   As for why a cluster of picturesque rocks and boulders in eastern California is named Alabama Hills, according to historians, among the first non-Native American visitors to the area were prospectors who staked mining claims in the Owens Valley area.

   Many were sympathetic to the Confederate side during the Civil War and named the hills after a Confederate warship, the Alabama, that had sunk a Union man-of-war ship, the Hatteras, off the coast of Texas in January 1863.

   In more recent years, there have been efforts to rename the hills, which were known by the native Paiute people as “Payahuunadü,” meaning “the land of flowing water.” While the Bureau of Land Management is still pondering its next step, many believe the site should be renamed to its original Paiute name, rather than continue using a name with racist connotations.

   For information on the name controversy, go to: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/california-eastern-sierras-reckon-with-racist-history-renaming-alabama-hills.

   For more general information about the area, go to: www.blm.gov/visit/alabama-hills-national-scenic-area.