The Basque people have a long and unique history in the American West, and many of their traditions are maintained today by Basque clubs throughout the region. One of the oldest and most active is the Elko Basque Club. Founded in 1959, it has hosted the National Basque Festival since 1964.

Edwin Deakin (1838-1923) was born in Sheffield, England, and immigrated to America in 1856. He lived in Chicago where, for a time, he earned his living painting commissioned portraits of Civil War heroes. In 1870, he moved west to San Francisco and established his home and studio. Deakin's paintings, in the Romantic landscape tradition, created iconic images of the Sierra Nevada, especially the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Saddlemaker Eddie Brooks is a transplanted Texan whose roots have grown deep into the buckaroo country around Elko. Brooks started working with leather as a boy, apprenticed in the saddle making trade, and was working in a Texas shop in 1964 when he was hired to run the saddle shop at Capriola's in Elko. He says that Nevada buckaroos "went everywhere horseback," so they really needed and appreciated well-made saddles. Working with them helped him develop his skills to a high art.

Engagement, a sculpture by Dennis Oppenheim (b. 1938), marks the street-side entrance to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Comprised of two enormous steel rings topped by houses-as-jewels, it is apparently a monument to the institution of marriage. It also ties directly to Reno's history of quick marriage and easy divorce.