Neighbors Talking With Neighbors in Washoe Valley, Nevada
Reno Evening News, February 11, 1884
The Trains Yesterday
A Hurricane Blowing and the Snow Drifting
The N&O train got stuck yesterday in a drift four miles from Reno. They ran back to Reno and too out 12 shovelers. When they got nine miles out they stuck again and could not move either way. A four-horse sleigh brought [...]
Reno Evening Gazette September 21, 1877
Washoe Valley Items
In company with Mr. E. Owens of Franktown we rode over the much talked of Dall Rd, leading from a point near Franktown to the Ophir grade. It will be remembered that this road was once offered to the county for $4,000, and was inspected by Messrs. Eastman [...]
We were down in Sacramento on some business and stopped by “Time Tested Books” at 1114 21st St. when we had some time to kill. It seems that to find items about Nevada the best strategy to to look elsewhere. The local antique stores and used book sellers are usually sold out here but in [...]
Reno Evening Gazette, October 30, 1880
A Grand Illumination.
Franktown was blazing last night. A procession with torches, banners and transparencies marched up and down. There were many ladies in the procession. Huge bonfires blazed at every corner. A unique feature was vast illumination on the mountainside west of town. A fire had been raging there for [...]
The San Francisco Call, January 14, 1896
Carson Opium Smugglers
Officers Find Fifty Pounds of the Drug and a Counterfeit Mixture in a Cache
Carson, Nev. Jan. 13. United State District Attorney Jones to-day found fifty taels of opium buried in one of the stalls at the racetrack. Lee Brooks, who hid the drug there, recently left town [...]
Or at least their effluent. Mercury was used extensively in the process to extract silver and gold from the native rock mined around the Virginia Range to the east. At the beginning of the development of the Comstock Lode, several mills located in Washoe Valley used the abundant water from the Carson Range to the [...]
Mark Twain bragged that Washoe Valley produced the best potatoes in the world when he was a reporter in Virginia City in the 1860’s.
Years later, in 1913, Washoe Valley rancher Gib Douglass reports he operation has produced two hundred tons of potatoes along with 700 tons of alfalfa. He also noted that heavy rains destroyed [...]
Reno Evening Gazette, September 21, 1877
Emerald Mine-Mr Holmes, of Franktown, informs us that work on the Emerald mine will shortly be resumed. This mine is owned by several parties in and about Franktown. It lies 8.5 miles northwest of Carson and just over the Washoe county line. The company will commence a drift to the [...]
Reno Evening Gazette, May 12, 1876
The rainstorm of day before yesterday visited Washoe Valley in a very severe form. The clouds burst, and large quantities of water fell, washing away rocks and earth in many places. The sand and earth was washed into Theo. Winters’ house, which is built up well from the ground, and [...]
The Chronicles of the Comstock site just posted an article on Washoe Valley history focusing on the Mormon presence in the 1850’s.
“Washoe Valley first was settled in 1852. The first settlers on Franktown Creek called the place “The Garden of Eden.” Within a year, other Mormon pioneers took up ranches eventually to be known as [...]
