Tag: carsoncity

There used to be a time that Carson City's Stewart Street was a quiet residential street. Sure, there were railroad tracks running down the street, with trains that traveled originally to the V&T Lumber Yard where the Railroad Museum is today, and then later connected all the way to Minden once the Carson Valley branch line was built. But the train only came through a few times a day, and the rest of the time it was a cozy, tree-lined street with houses on both sides.

Boy, have times changed. Stewart Street is now one of Carson's major thoroughfares. It's a main north-south artery, carrying traffic off of Carson Street and whisking it along at a solid 35mph. At the moment it dead-ends at Hwy 50, but plans are in the works to extend it north and have it meet Roop by the cemetery. And when that happens you know the traffic will only get thicker along Stewart Street.

So it's no surprise that all of the trees and quiet front yards have been torn out years ago. Nobody wants to live on a noisy street like Stewart, and the neighborhood has become commercial anyway, so the houses have been pushed out one by one. Stewart Street now is home to banks, motels, and the massive bulk of the State Supreme Court and State Library buildings. It's not a place anyone would want to live.

Except for this house, the one holdout left on Stewart Street.

I really don't know anything about the history of this house. Obviously it's several decades old, maybe even old enough to have had its windows rattled by the daily train to Minden. And obviously whoever owns it has held out against the commercialization of Stewart Street for all that time, refusing to sell or move the house to make way for anything else. All of their neighbors are gone, and the house itself is now surrounded on all sides by asphalt. In fact, it's basically become a part of the Nugget parking lot.

I've never seen anyone go into or come out of this house. The yard looks like it's been neglected for years. The paint job looks like it dates back to Kennedy. There's a one-car garage in the back that I've never seen open. In short, the house looks abandoned. But there are slight signs of life. None of the windows are broken or boarded up. A couple of No Trespassing signs are scattered around the property, indicating that someone wants to be left alone. A fairly new garden hose hangs off the side of the house. And the trees, at least, seem not to be wanting for water. So maybe someone does still live in there, a noisy life behind drawn curtains, remembering a Carson City, and a Stewart Street, that are long gone.

If you know anything about this house, don't hesitate to share!

As a followup from yesterday, the Nugget has added their logo to the top of their new electronic sign on Carson Street.

Looks like the Carson Nugget is installing a new electronic sign in their west parking lot, right along Carson Street. They already have a marquee along Stewart Street, but this sign looks like it will be full color and full motion, like the sign at the Fandango. Plus a little something at the top, yet to be installed.

This plot of land wasn't always a parking lot. It used to be home to the Arlington Hotel until it was torn down in the 1960s. I'll let you compare these two photos and decide for yourself which is more desirable for downtown Carson.

I've been a hermit this weekend, holed up working in either my backyard or my office the whole time. So I ended up missing the two biggest events of early summer, the Carson Valley Days in Minden/Gardnerville and the Carson Rendezvous in Mills Park. I'm sure I'm not the only one who missed one or both of them.

So if there's anyone out there that did make it, and has photos, video, or stories they'd like to share, I'd love to get your stuff on the site to fill in those of us who were stuck elsewhere. So if you have anything you'd like to publish, just send it my way!

I'd say that by far the most interesting construction projects in town are going on at the Casino Fandango. And it seems like they keep adding more, like every week they're working on something new. It's all supposed to be done by "early 2008", so let's take a look at what they've got cooking this week.

The Movie Theater

The new movie theater is probably the most exciting part of the whole project. For years now the Northgate Cinemas has had a monopoly on movie-going in Carson City, but going there is not a good experience. It's dirty and run-down, and the fact that it's the only choice in Carson is pretty sad. This new theater is supposed to open in just about a month, and I predict it's going to kill the Wallace Northgate. Like, they'll have to start showing second-run movies for a dollar after this Galaxy Theater opens.

They're doing the last little bits of decorative shaping on the outside, and they're probably working just as fast inside too.

The Hotel

The new four-story Marriott Courtyard is quickly taking shape on the grounds of the old RV lot. They're on the third floor now, framing up the walls, and the whole thing is supposed to be open and ready for occupancy in the fall of this year.

Curry Street

The good news is, after months of being closed, Curry Street has been repaved, striped, and is now open to traffic all the way through. It was just a couple of years ago I can remember this stretch of Curry being little more than a dirt trail, almost too rough for my car to handle. Now it's modern and smooth. I guess it has to be to handle all the movie theater traffic.

The bad news is, now the intersection of Koontz and Curry needs to be repaved, so it's probably going to be closed off and on and in pieces for the entire month of June. Right now you can travel all the way through on Curry Street, but Koontz is blocked off. Expect this to change over the next few weeks as Curry Street has to close again to finish the paving job.

Casino Expansion

The last piece of the Fandango puzzle is this expansion they're building at the southwest corner of the building. Until now the Fandango has been content to remain within the four walls of the original Supply One building. But it's time for them to break out, and they're starting with this corridor at the back of the building.

They seem to be building the expansion in two phases. First they're building this part, which will reach from the casino to Curry Street, then whisk visitors up an escalator and over a sky bridge to the movie theater. This will make it easier for patrons to take in dinner at one of the Fandango's restaurants and then grab a show afterwards, all without having to brave the traffic of Curry Street.

This will only be Carson City's second sky bridge, after the one that the Ormsby House has built. This will be the first one to actually carry the public, though, since nobody's going to be setting foot in the OH for a couple of years still.

Then phase two of the expansion looks to be a triangular extension in the very back of the casino building, meeting up with the part they're building now. I can only guess this will be room for more slots, but who knows what else they have up their sleeves.

So that's what's going on at the Fandango this week. Between this, the new Bodine's that's still being built, and the proposed Jethro's Casino just a mile away, south Carson is really establishing itself as a gaming hotspot. Check back next week to see what other new projects they've started.

The Long John Silver's restaurant on South Carson Street has been there, I think, ever since I moved here in the mid 80s. The food was never that great, but sometimes you're in the mood for some greasy fish, you know? And hushpuppies. I could probably eat a dozen of those in one sitting. I wouldn't feel too great the next day, but it would be worth it.

I drove by this week to find the door locked, the restaurant empty, and the word "CLOSED" on the marquee.

No explanation that I could find was forthcoming for why the restaurant closed. I guess the popularity of Long John Silver is dropping, at least here in Carson City. A tiny farewell note was pasted in the drive-thru and on the front door. It reads:

This Long John Silver's has been a member of the community for a number of years.

We will miss our customers.
Thank you for your patronage.

We hope you will visit the Reno Long John Silver's when you are in town.

I'll always remember this as the place where you never quite got exactly what you ordered. We would get Long John Silver's to go, and sometimes if we were lucky we would have a few extra pieces of fish, or coleslaw when we asked for fries. On the unlucky occasions, we'd only have three dinners in the bag instead of the four we paid for. But the service was consistently inconsistent, one of those things that's charming at first but pisses you off after the tenth time it happens.

So see you later, Long John Silver's.

The 2007 Historic Preservation Awards are here, and three winners have been announced. The Belknap House on Nevada Street, the Yerington House on Division, and the McKeen Car #22, which is currently under restoration at the Railroad Museum.

Read the Nevada Appeal article, look at the city's website to see how the Cactus Jack's sign just barely lost out, or go here to see the Appeal's video on the McKeen car from a couple of months ago.

So just in case you thought this latest announcement by Jethro about moving his casino project was just his usual hot air, now comes the news that he's sold the old Wal*Mart building in South Carson. This is the same Wal*Mart about which he said, "I can wait in perpetuity." I guess perpetuity is about two and a half years.

Actually, this is a good move for Jethro. It shows that he's not really the stubborn fool that he's made himself out to be over the last four years. Who knows how long he's been working on a deal to get rid of the Wal*Mart. Even as early as 2005 he was talking about the possibility of moving to Douglas County. So behind all of his bluster, he really did realize that the battle for Carson City was lost and was trying to move forward. His timing was a little off ("I'm going to put a shovel in the ground in June [2006], one way or another"), but even back then I think he knew he would have to sell out.

And even if he never built his casino, the building turned out to be a good investment. Jethro (or his partner, John King) bought the building for $4.3 million and sold it for just about twice that, $8.5 million. So it was a smart deal even if the place sat empty for four years. And now the money from the sale can go into the new location in Douglas County. Maybe this time all the stars will finally line up for Jethro.

And what about the Wal*Mart building itself? The new owner is a developer that specializes in taking old empty buildings and putting new tenants in. It's too early to speculate what stores might be moving in, or even if it would be one big retailer, several small ones, or even an "outlet mall" like the article says. All I know is that this same kind of company bought the old K-Mart building at the north end of town, and was supposed to be working out the same kind of deal for it. They were even supposedly getting Kohl's to move in there. Well, now Kohl's has picked Riverwood in Douglas County, and the K-Mart remains empty. So maybe this news really means nothing for the old Wal*Mart building, and it will stay like it is for the foreseeable future.

But at least Jethro has moved on, proving himself to be not quite so much of a grandstanding fool. Even the Letters to the Editor are on his side now.

Out of all the county lines in Nevada, probably none have gotten more press than the Carson-Douglas county line in the neighborhood of Fuji Park. In less than a decade this part of town has exploded, being transformed from acre after acre of rolling sagebrush into one of the largest shopping complexes outside of Reno. The seemingly endless land at the northern slope of the Indian Hills has proven very attractive for developers, bringing in a Super Wal*Mart, Best Buy, Trader Joe's, Old Navy, Bed Bath and Beyond, Borders Books, In-N-Out Burger, Chilis, Del Taco, and dozens more retailers and restaurants. The twin shopping centers of Carson Valley Plaza and Clear Creek Plaza are one of the fastest-growing parts of Carson City, and there's more in the works. Another big shopping center is planned, along with housing developments, an auto mall, and maybe even a hotel-casino.

The part of the story where this gets interesting, though, is that none of this is actually in Carson City. That's because the county line was drawn at the bottom of the hill, not at the top, so all of this sloping land that you'd think would be part of Carson is really under the jurisdiction of Douglas County. And that means all the tax money from all these shopping and dining establishments goes south to Minden, not north to Carson, and this has caused the Carson City Supervisors no end of being pissed off over the last several years. But why is the county line at the bottom of the hill? Who's responsible for this? Let's see if we can go back in history and figure it out.

Millions of years ago (yes, we're going back that far), huge forces deep inside the Earth under Nevada caused two mountain ranges to rise up, the Carson Range and the Pinenut Mountains. In between the two of them a flat valley formed, and in the middle of that valley was a stubborn outcropping of rock that today we call Indian Hills. These hills kind of pinch off the valley in the middle like an hourglass, enough that from the ground it looks like there are really two separate valleys. Today we call these the Carson and Eagle Valleys.

In the 1850s and 60s when this area was first being settled by Americans, the two valleys were home to two different settlements, Genoa in the south and Carson City in the north. And so when the Nevada Territory was created in 1861, it was only obvious that two separate counties should be formed. The Carson Valley was made into Douglas County, named after Stephen Douglas who had lost the presidency to Abraham Lincoln in 1860. And the Eagle Valley was made into Ormsby County, named after Major William Ormsby who was killed by Paiutes at Pyramid Lake the same year. And where to draw the line between these two counties? At the Indian Hills, of course, the outcropping of rock that still divided the two valleys.

But things got complicated. Every one of Ormsby County's other borders was drawn at the top of a hill. Its border with Washoe County, to the north, followed the ridge of mountains separating the Eagle and Washoe Valleys. And the Lyon County border, to the east, was drawn at the top of the ridge between the Eagle Valley and Mound House. Ormsby County's western border, of course, was in the middle of Lake Tahoe at the California state line. So that left the drawing of the Ormsby-Douglas border, which by all logic should have been drawn along the crest of the Indian Hills. But it wasn't. Instead the county line was drawn to follow Clear Creek, a small stream that came out of the Carson Range right at the base of the Indian Hills. I don't know why they chose the creek to be the county line, but back then the Indian Hills were completely desolate so it didn't really matter where the line was.

The choice of Clear Creek as the county line made for some interesting stories. One I head was the story of a homesteader that lived right on the banks of the creek. He became increasingly frustrated with the taxes and leadership coming from Carson City, so one day he set out with his shovel and rerouted the creek to run around the other side of his house. And voila, just like that he was a resident of Douglas County.

Presumably sometime in the 20th century someone saw how silly it was to have the county line follow a seasonal creekbed, so they stretched it taut into the straight line we have today. But even now, you can see that it swings around Indian Hills instead of going over them, still more or less following the path of the creek.

This map shows the county line as a dotted line that comes down Spooner Summit, through Fuji Park, then keeps going until it hits Center Drive coming out of the Stewart Indian Community. It turns south and follows Center Drive for a bit, right along the extreme eastern edge of Indian Hills. The line seems to be avoiding the hills all together. After one last detour to the east, it finally meets back up with Clear Creek and follows the path of the Virginia and Truckee right-of-way all the way to the Carson River. Then it turns east again, heading straight into the mountains where it meets up with Lyon County.

This line seems to have been deliberately drawn to keep all of the Indian Hills inside Douglas County, but the why of that doesn't really make any sense to me. It could have easily been put at the crest of the hill, where modern-day Jack's Valley Road meets the highway. And then we wouldn't be having to sit through all of the teeth-gnashing we have today about how all the retailers and auto dealers are "defecting" to Douglas County, and how Douglas is "stealing" Carson's tax base. Maybe if the Ormsby County founding fathers had known how valuable the Indian Hills would someday be, they wouldn't have given them up so quickly.

Oh, and here's one more funny thing about the county line:

Look at the county line in this satellite picture, and see how it jogs around the old midget kart racetrack in Fuji Park. That's pretty funny, how the racetrack was so important to Carson that the line had to be drawn that way. Especially since, further to the west, parts of the park spill over into Douglas County. Even the Fuji Park Cemetery seems to be split in half by the line, almost to where James Johnson and John Thoroughman are buried in separate counties. But god forbid Carson would give up their racetrack!