Online Nevada Encyclopedia

History of Nevada Diversity

Grafton Brown: Lithography

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918) was born of free parentage in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In all likelihood, he had the distinction of being the first professional African-American artist to venture into Nevada.

Grafton Brown

Grafton Tyler Brown, perhaps the first African American artist to depict California and the Pacific Coast, was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, February 22, 1841. Before he was twenty, Brown moved to San Francisco and learned the art of lithography from C. C. Kuchel. In 1861 and again in 1864, Brown created the two earliest bird's eye views of Virginia City. At the age of twenty-six, he established his own firm, G.T.

Good Time Coming?: Black Nevadans in the Nineteenth Century

In 1975, Elmer Rusco (1928-2004) published Good Time Coming?: Black Nevadans in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1975). To date, this remains the most complete and significant scholarly work on the history of 19th century African Americans in Nevada.

Germans and Las Vegas

Germans have been at the center of Las Vegas's development since the city's founding in 1905. Whether German-born, first, or second generation, most migrated to Southern Nevada after living elsewhere in Nevada or the United States, and either had become part of the American mainstream or were in the process of assimilating.

German and Austrian Immigrants

Generalizing about German immigrants living in nineteenth-century Nevada is difficult for several reasons. Before 1870, various German states were autonomous, and people coming from these principalities often identified with individual states more than with the concept of a German nation.

Gender in Nevada: A Comstock Case Study

Indisputably, women were in the minority in nineteenth-century Nevada. Mining boomtowns attracted single men more quickly than women; nevertheless, both genders were present during the earliest period of settlement, and women played a significant role in the building of the territory and state.

Gareth Hughes: Unlikely Missionary to the Paiutes

In May 1958, Reno and San Francisco newspapers announced that Gareth Hughes, Welsh-born silent screen celebrity and Shakespearean stage actor, was leaving his mission to Pyramid Lake Paiute Indians and returning to his homeland. The widespread and richly deserved praise for nearly two decades of tireless dedication to Nevada Indians was also punctuated with mysteries, theological controversies, and issues of personal identity. When he left Nevada, he carried with him a lung disease contracted in the course of his ministry.

Folklife of Tribal Groups

The four tribes native to the state of Nevada are the Washoe, the Western Shoshone, the Northern Paiute and the Southern Paiute. In adapting to the extremes of the high desert environment, all of these peoples have developed similar ways of life and cultural forms over the thousands of years they have occupied the Great Basin.

Florence Shilling McClure

Florence Shilling McClure earned the nickname, "Hurricane Flo" because of her strength and relentless advocacy for women and children in Nevada. McClure is a co-founder of the Las Vegas organization, Community Action Against Rape, and she has also worked to improve conditions for incarcerated women in the state.

Florence Lee Jones Cahlan

In a town and an era in which women often were second-class citizens, Florence Lee Jones was a true Las Vegas leader and pioneer. Born in 1910, Jones was raised in Missouri where she earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri in 1933. She soon moved to southern Nevada to join her family, including brothers Cliff and Herb Jones, who worked on Hoover Dam and went on to lengthy political and legal careers.

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