Tag: carsoncity

Yes, I'm back from my vacation, unpacking, decompressing and trying to get back into the groove. I came back to see some progress on a few construction projects, which is always exciting.

The arena at the Carson City Fairgrounds has been wiped out, part of the project to improve and update the fairgrounds. I know some of the plans for what should be done in this space were kind of controversial; hopefully everything worked out and everyone will be happy.

The Bodine's Casino, right next door, is starting to form up its pillars. This is supposed to be an underground parking garage, with the casino and restaurants above it. Bodine's is also footing a large part of the bill for the fairgrounds improvements.

And, in the two weeks I was gone, the Casino Fandango hotel went vertical in a big way. Looks like the whole first floor is all framed up, and they're just about ready to start on the second. Moving fast!

I'm sure there's a lot more that happened in the last two weeks. I have about fourteen newspapers I have to go through!

Over its 80-year history, the Virginia and Truckee Railroad ran a grand total of 29 locomotives across its tracks. Out of the original 29 engines, only nine still survive. The Nevada State Railroad Museum here in Carson City has four of them, there is also one back east in Pennsylvania, and back in January I profiled the three that live at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

Those eight engines are all in the care of museums, and they're pretty well taken care of. They have been restored to their original condition, and several of them can still operate under their own steam. They've got a good life, even if half of them are far from their home here in Carson City. But there is one more engine, one that's almost forgotten in an out-of-the way corner of the desert. On the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, at Old Tuscon Studios, sitting in the blistering sun on a piece of track barely big enough to hold it, is #11 The Reno.

Photo from http://www.oldtucson.com/film_office/photos/vehicles/vehicles.htm

The Reno was named, aptly enough, because it was the first engine built to haul trains between Reno and Virginia City when the tracks were extended in 1872. And it ran that route for sixty years, hauling gold and silver, freight and passengers, and also carrying U.S. presidents. When Ulysses S. Grant visited Virginia City in 1879, and Theodore Roosevelt came to Carson City in 1903, both times the V&T sent out their prize engine, The Reno, to carry their presidential passengers.

The Reno was sold off in the 1930s as the debts of the V&T kept rising, and it went to work for Hollywood, starring in such movies as Union Pacific, Annie Get Your Gun, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and many other B Westerns in the 50s and 60s. In 1970 Old Tucson Studios bought it and used it in several productions filmed there, then they put it on display for tourists to see. But then in 1995, fire raged through Old Tucson. Many of the wooden film sets on the property were destroyed, and The Reno itself was reduced to a charred husk.

Photo from http://www.arizonaandpacificrr.com/spot/oldtucson/oldtucson.html

Hollywood once again saved it, this time for the film Wild Wild West. The Reno was given a new cab and a fresh coat of paint, then when they were done it went back on display at Old Tucson. But since then it's been shoved out of the way, forgotten, neglected, and left to blister in the hot Arizona sun. Out of all the V&T engines, it's probably the one in the worst shape and stored in the worst conditions. It's the one that most needs to come back to Carson City, back home to where it belongs and where it actually means something to people.

If my computer had a "Thumbs Up" button like my TiVo does, I'd be clicking it repeatedly right now. More like this. More like this.

Video from the Nevada Appeal.

More info on McKeen #22.

It's not really a "surprise" storm, because we were warned that it was coming. I think the real surprise is that the weathermen were right. "Snow?" I scoffed. "I'll believe that when I see it."

Around here the default setting is sunny and hot. That's what we get ten months out of the year, is sunny and hot. Summer comes just as soon as it's possible in the beginning of the year, and sticks around as long as we'll let it. That's why we were seeing highs of like 80 degrees just a couple of weeks ago. We skip right over spring. Summer starts in March around here.

And on top of that is all the disappointment that comes from living in a rain shadow, where you get to hear about all the snow storms and rain storms that are coming your way, and you get to watch the mountains get shrouded in clouds, but the storm never makes it that last few miles. It never hops over the hump and shares its moisture with the valleys. So that's why, even when the weather report says it's going to rain, or says it's going to snow, I never believe it. I don't believe it in December, and I don't believe it in March.

But sometimes it surprises you, and even in the face of all of those obstacles you get snow in summer. Like we did today.

I came across another local blog, that of Tasha Costa at techtasha.wordpress.com. Tasha writes an occasional column in the Nevada Appeal on technology issues, and her blog is mostly a place for her to link to the articles when they go up. But she's only the second Nevada Appeal employee I know of with a real blog (after Kirk Caraway), so props to her. May there be many more.

Why are museums and historical societies so stingy with their photo collections? This is something I've always wondered. You've got an organization that's been created for the public good, like a museum, and they have this fantastic resource, like a collection of historic photos, that could easily be put on the web to enrich the community, but instead they hold onto it. They control access, they charge fees, they keep everything hidden and away from public view, and they only let these pictures be seen as special "exhibitions" that run for a limited time. Then the photos go back into the dark where nobody can see them except for the chosen few. Why do they do this?

The latest thing to prompt this question is an RGJ article on an exhibition at the Nevada Historical Society featuring photos from the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierra. Sounds like a great exhibit:

Along with dozens of historic photos that track the building of the Central Pacific from Sacramento, across Nevada and into Utah where it met the westbound-building of the Union Pacific at Promontory Summit, the exhibit includes maps of suggested routes for the railroad, artwork, artifacts from work on the railway and newspaper stories of the era.

Now, except for the artifacts part of that, this entire exhibit sounds like it could easily be put online. Grow your audience from hundreds to thousands, or hundreds of thousands. Instead of having it "run through Dec. 14" because you have limited space in your exhibition hall, put it online where it can be permanent. But do they do this? No. It's like they deliberately want to limit the reach of this exhibit, to share it with as few people as possible. They want the control, they like being the keepers. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

And it's not just this one exhibit. Museums all across the country have huge collections of photos and artwork that they could put online. Some of them do a pretty good job. Just search Google for historic photo collection and you'll get five million hits. But if you go in close and study the results, you'll see that these are only partial collections. Like they'll have a few dozen images online, and if you're lucky some kind of catalog of the rest. Our local museum, the Nevada State Museum here in Carson City, has none of this. Neither does the Nevada State Library and Archives. The afore-mentioned Nevada Historical Society has a website so out-of-date that it doesn't even mention this new Central Pacific exhibit. The only ones doing it right locally are the University of Nevada and their growing number of "Digital Collections". Maybe the other museums and libraries in the area need to catch a clue from them.

Some of the resistance might come from the fact that these photo collections are a revenue stream for museums and other organizations right now, and they don't want to cut that off. That's valid, but short-sighted. Are these collections being maintained for the good of the public, or as a way to raise money for the museum? And which of those two options is better for society? You can still charge for prints, anyway.

More resistance might come from them thinking the costs of putting the pictures online is too high. And that comes from not understanding the web. Most of the organizations I've found online that "get it" are using software called ContentDM, which from what I can tell looks like a very good CMS for publishing photos. The software isn't free, but I can't imagine it breaking a museum's budget. And if you don't want to shell out for a professional solution, find some volunteer or staff member that knows PHP and get them to write the thing. Or bring someone from the community that has the skills onto the project as a consultant. Photo galleries are not hard things to program; I've done it myself, so you know it's not difficult. And as far as hosting? Web hosting is cheap and getting cheaper every day. Maybe there are control freaks in the State IT department that balk at you running PHP or using outside hosting? Tell them to stuff it and remind them that you're their boss, not the other way around. Or even use Flickr and poach off of Yahoo!'s generosity.

The obstacles are there, but they're not insurmountable. More and more stuff is moving onto the web, the entire of human experience that can be transmitted digitally, text pictures and video, is moving onto the web. These museums, libraries, and historical societies need to get with it and realize that the transformation is happening. People don't want to have to visit the museum in order to visit the museum, you know? If they want to do it from home, if they want to do it from their office or from a coffee shop or from a hotel when they're on vacation, let them do it!

This is part of the motivation behind me wanting to build my own historical photo collection of Carson City and the surrounding areas, as a workaround for the state agencies that are dragging their feet. Some anonymous person out there has been great at submitting pictures to the Around Carson Photo Database, but one day soon I hope to start on a separate collection, a special site just for historic pictures, and dump in all the pictures I've gathered from all my different sources, and let you dump any pictures you might have, and maybe we can show them how to do it right and spur them to get off their butts to do it even better.

That's how the grassroots works. One blade at a time.

Front page article in the Nevada Appeal today about Bodine's Casino, and the construction going on down there. The out-of-state developer is Mike Pegram, a restauranteur and racing horse owner from Arizona. But he's partnered with some local casino owners, Gary and Cindy Carano, who own the Eldorado in downtown Reno and are partners in the Silver Legacy. Together they've scaled down the plans for Bodine's, down to 26,000 feet from the 66,000 the previous developer was planning on building. But they're leaving space to add on, up to another 8,000 square feet. And it isn't going to have a Western theme, because according to Pegram that idea has been "overused".

Inside the casino will be all-slots, with no table games. It will have two bars and a Chicago-themed restaurant and pizzeria, with a replica of an old Chicago L train. And they're still building the underground parking garage, even though I said the other day it didn't look like they were digging deep enough.

And, at least for the moment, they are keeping the name "Bodine's" for the casino. Which should be an interesting wrinkle for Max Baer, Jr, if he ever gets his casino built. How can he convince people that "Jethro's" and "Bodine's" aren't related properties?

There was a pretty gnarly accident at the bottom of Spooner Summit today, where Hwy 50 meets 395. The accident involved a tour bus and an SUV, and it was bad enough to require closing the highway. When I passed by at 1:00, the scene was still being cleaned up, so I don't know when it's going to reopen.

Carson Street is closed at Clearview to all traffic, but if you take the side roads you can meet up with the highway at Clear Creek and get out that way. That is currently the only way out of Carson City to the south. As you can imagine, this means traffic is backed up pretty bad on Carson Street. When I drove by the back-up stretched all the way from Clearview to the Starbucks in the Quail Run shopping center, just about to Fairview. If the road hasn't reopened yet, I'm sure it's much worse by now. And even if it has, that much congestion doesn't just clear up instantly.

So if you're thinking of heading out of Carson City to the south, here's my advice: don't. Give that traffic an hour at least to clear out, or take the back roads to Clear Creek.

The Nevada Appeal has a token article on their website, but I'm sure soon they'll have more details of the accident.

Update: The Appeal has the full story.

Someone's been awesomely posting old black and white historic photos of Carson City to the photo database this week. This is great stuff. I've seen most of these, but I haven't put any of them up online myself yet. And there's even a few in there that are new to me.

If you get some time, go over to the Photos page and check them out. This just spurs me on even more to get working on the Online Historic Photo Archive I've been wanting to build, where I would just take every old picture I've ever found of the area and dump them all online. It's something I really want to do, but the amount of work it would take to get there is daunting. Plus real life keeps getting in the way, Plus I've been in a massive creative slump lately (like you haven't noticed), so it's tough to take on a project this big. But I've found some really awesome V&T photos in the library, and that's wanted me to start up working on the Then And Now articles again, and now this anonymous person is doing some of the work for me, and it seems like maybe all the signs are there and I just need to get busy and get it done.

Never underestimate my capacity for procrastination, though. I've been too busy taking pictures of cows.

I put up some pictures last week of the work that was being done at the Bodine's casino site. It took a few days, but the Nevada Appeal finally made mention of it on Wednesday. Although there wasn't a whole lot of new information in that article, mostly because the new developer couldn't be reached to comment. So I guess no news means there have been no changes, and they're still following through with the original plan to build a casino on the corner there. According to the building permits it will be two stories and 66,000 square feet. Not sure if it still includes the underground parking that was talked about last year, because the bulldozers have stopped digging, and the hole they dug really doesn't seem deep enough.

This and the Fandango Hotel will definitely be two exciting projects to watch in South Carson this year.