Popular imagination links the Irish with the building of America's transcontinental railroad. Irish track layers dominated the westward push in answer to their largely Chinese counterparts heading east from California. Nevertheless, most Irish in early Nevada were miners with no railroad experience. The Irish contributed to Nevada's earliest mining period.

Hermann Schussler is famous for designing the Comstock water system, one of the most extraordinary engineering feats of the West, but his influence on the state exceeded even that astounding achievement. He was born in what is today Germany, in Rastede in 1842. Schussler attended the nearby Prussian Military Academy at Oldenburg between 1859 and 1862. In the fall of 1862, he left to study civil engineering at universities in Karlsruhe and Zurich and worked for some time as an engineer in Switzerland.

In 1859, noted eastern journalist Horace Greeley visited the region he promoted with the oft-quoted recommendation "Go West young man." During his travels, he came to Genoa, the period's chief settlement on the eastern slope of the Sierra. Pressed to arrive in time to give a speech in Placerville, California, across the mountains, Greeley boarded a stage and made his needs known to Hank Monk, the driver. The ensuing incident was eventually recounted throughout the nation.

In recognition of the legacy of democracy the United States inherited from the ancient world, classical architecture repeatedly became an inspiration for design in the American Republic. Architectural historians refer to one of the earliest phases of this borrowing as Greek Revival, with eighteenth-century roots and archaeological inspiration. The style was spread by carpenter's guides and pattern books, and its greatest popularity was between 1820 and 1860. Early settlers built Greek Revival houses throughout northern Nevada during the 1850s and 60s, and many survive.