Places
Archaeology on the Comstock
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
Professional archaeology has yielded many insights into Comstock life over a century ago. The discovery of an African American saloon, the world's oldest Tabasco Sauce bottle, and the first examples of human DNA retrieved from artifacts other than human remains have captured international... more
William Stewart
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
William Stewart was the most prominent lawyer in the early years of the Comstock, and he represented Nevada as an important, controversial United States senator for twenty-eight years. Born in rural New York State, he briefly attended Yale before leaving for the California gold fields in 1850. His... more
William Vaughn Howard
Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
It is not difficult to locate William Vaughn Howard (1921-1986) along the spectrum of art movements in the United States when he joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno art department in 1963. Abstract Expressionism still held sway over museums and galleries, both their collections and... more
Anti-Semitism in Nevada
Places: Carson City, Clark County, Virginia City, Elko, Douglas County, Elko County, Reno, Storey County, Washoe County, Wells, Las Vegas, South Lake Tahoe, Northern Nevada, Southern Nevada
Except in a few published writings, blatant anti-Semitism was a rarity in nineteenth century Nevada. After 1900, mean-spirited references to Jews could be found in private correspondence and diaries. While anti-Semitism never became widespread or organized, isolated activities marred the otherwise... more
William Wright, aka Dan De Quille
Most who knew William Wright, a colleague of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) on Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, believed that of the two, Wright was the most likely to succeed. Instead, Twain went on to achieve immediate national and international fame while Wright, nineteenth-century... more
Ann Ronald
Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
A native of the Pacific Northwest, Ann Ronald was born in 1939. She migrated to the high desert of Northern Nevada in 1970 to take a teaching position in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Reno following completion of her PhD in Victorian literature at Northwestern University.... more
Andrew S. Hallidie
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
Andrew S. Hallidie was the inventor of the flat wire cable, a device that made it possible to send elevators into deep, hard rock mines. Born Andrew Smith in London in 1836, he was the son of an engineer who held patents for making metal wire ropes. Smith eventually adopted the name Hallidie after... more
Winnemucca
Places: Winnemucca, Humboldt County, Northern Nevada
The site of modern-day Winnemucca has been important to Nevada since the first explorers traversed the region in the late 1820s. It later became a critical place for early settlers, and marked the point at which the immigrant trail headed south toward the Sierra Nevada passes. Winnemucca became a... more
Anasazi Rock Art
Anasazi and other Native American groups in Nevada came over 8,000 years ago and created a lasting legacy in rock art images carved or painted on stone surfaces. While we do not know what many of the images mean, native people living in Nevada today have traditional stories that incorporate some of... more
Americans at the Birth of Nevada
Historians of ethnicity and immigration often overlook those born in the United States, and yet these people have just as much sense of a self-identity as someone from another country. Between 1850 and 1860, virtually everyone in the western Great Basin except the Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe... more
Yarrow
Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is found throughout Nevada, and has a long history of food and medicinal uses. Old folk names for yarrow include field hops, devil's nettle, milfoil, old man's mustard, woundwort, and yerw.Most Indian groups in Nevada have been known to use yarrow in... more
Alpine, Churchill County
Places: Alpine, Churchill County, Northern Nevada
On the eastern slopes of the Clan Alpine Mountains in Churchill County, mining began in earnest as early as 1864. The Clan Alpine Mountain Range runs north to south. Its east facing slopes descend into Edwards Creek Valley and run parallel to U.S. Highway 50. Mining records indicate that several... more
Yellow Jacket Disaster
Places: Storey County, Northern Nevada
Gold Hill's Yellow Jacket Disaster was probably the worst mining accident in Nevada history. On the morning of April 7, 1869, fire spread at the 800-foot level. As the day crew descended, smoldering timbers collapsed, flooding poisonous air into the Yellow Jacket and neighboring Kentuck and... more
Alice Maud Hartley
Places: Virginia City, Reno, Storey County, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
Alice Maud Hartley (1864-1908) is a tragic figure in the annals of Nevada art. She was born in England, and arrived in Reno in 1892. It was then that her life became entangled with Nevada state senator Murray D. Foley. On July 26, 1894, following a tense argument, she fatally shot the senator. A... more
Yolande Jacobson Sheppard
Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
Yolande Jacobson Sheppard (1921-1998) often worked in the shadow of husband/painter and University of Nevada, Reno, art professor, Craig Sheppard (1913-1978). Born in 1921, she received a degree in art from the University of Oklahoma at Norman. She arrived in Nevada in 1947, and over the next fifty... more
Alice Key: A Renaissance Woman
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
Dancer, journalist, community activist, and political leader, Alice Key made many contributions to Las Vegas and civil rights.Born on March 18, 1911 in Henderson, Kentucky, she moved as an infant to Riverside, California, with her entire family. She grew up across the street from her grandfather,... more
Yucca Flat
Places: Nye County, Southern Nevada
Yucca Flat is a closed basin in the Nevada Test Site where 827 documented atmospheric and underground nuclear tests took place between 1951 and 1992—a total that represents almost eighty percent of all United States nuclear tests. The two-hundred square mile region lies to the east of the... more
Alfred Doten
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Alfred Doten (1829-1903) sailed to California in 1849 to make his fortune in placer gold mining. Unsuccessful, he moved to Nevada in 1863 to participate in the silver boom but gravitated instead to journalism. He worked as a reporter on the Nevada newspapers: the... more
Zoray Andrus
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
Zoray Andrus is often identified with the artistic fortunes of Virginia City. A native of Alameda, California, she attended California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and studied with a number of influential artists including Hans Hoffman at the University of California–Berkeley.... more
Alamo
Places: Alamo, Lincoln County, Southern Nevada
The town of Alamo is located on U.S. Highway 93 in the Pahranagat Valley, an oasis in southwestern Lincoln County, approximately 100 miles north of Las Vegas. The town was named for its numerous cottonwood trees, “alamo” being the Spanish word for the tree. Established in 1905-06 by... more
Aladdin Hotel
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
The Aladdin Hotel was the first major casino to open on the Las Vegas Strip in the 1960s, eight years after the area's 1950s boom period ended with the Stardust's debut in 1958.The original site of the Aladdin, between the Flamingo and Tropicana hotels on the Strip's eastern side, had... more
Al Livingston
Places: Carson City, Douglas County, Genoa, Northern Nevada
Al Livingston, one of Nevada's first settlers, became an architect of a tourism approach to the state's budget woes at the end of the nineteenth century.Born in Prussian Poland in 1843, Livingston was a tobacco merchant in Genoa in 1861 before becoming proprietor of the Ozark Saloon in... more
Zoria Zetaruk
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
Zoria Zetaruk is a unique Nevada treasure. She was born in Alberta, Canada, to Ukrainian immigrant parents and grew up with the traditions, foods, and crafts of that culture. She learned the art of pysanky, or decorated eggs, from her mother, who used to pretend she couldn't see well in order... more
Al Freeman
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
The 1950s and 1960s were the halcyon days of Las Vegas hotel publicists. Throughout those two decades, men like Herb McDonald, Harvey Diederich, Jim Seagrave, Eugene Murphy, and Abe Schiller successfully promoted Las Vegas. Al Freeman, who worked at the Sands Hotel from its opening in 1952 until... more
Al Cahlan
Places: Clark County, Elko, Elko County, Reno, Washoe County, Las Vegas, Northern Nevada, Southern Nevada
Albert E. "Al" Cahlan was one of the most influential newspapermen in Las Vegas history. Born in Reno in 1899, he earned an engineering degree from the University of Nevada and taught math at Las Vegas High School. In 1922, E.M. Steninger, the longtime owner of the Elko Free Press, hired... more