Tag: carsoncity

The article in the RGJ about Saturday's CC150 event captured the day perfectly:

Oppressive heat couldn't keep hundreds of people from turning out for Carson City's Sesquicentennial celebration on Saturday.

Thanks to the Carson Times I've learned about a new blog, that of Dennis Cassinelli. Titled the Chronicles of the Comstock, the blog is a reprint of the weekly columns he writes for the Comstock Chronicle newspaper. He just started publishing the columns online in June, so the archives are kind of small. But there are already articles about Virginia City's Great Fire, the lumbering operations at Lake Tahoe, and digging for bottles in Carson City. Good stuff.

The Carson Times has a report on how the summer activites in downtown Carson, like the Farmer's Market, Fridays @ Third, and the Pop-Up Park, have been doing better than expected.

29 vendors -- including the most Nevada growers at a time in any currently running market in Northern Nevada -- will man their booths for nearly 1,900 expected customers.

Live music, table seating and the ease of a weekend morning add to the 14 farmers and 15 boutique vendors who are there each week through Oct. 4 at the Third and Curry Street parking lot in downtown Carson City.

It seems like everything is going right all at once here, and 2008 is the year that the revitalization of downtown Carson has really stepped into high gear. I think the focus on Curry Street as the base for all these activities and events is one of the biggest things that has led to the success. Carson Street is a losing proposition. Even after the freeway is built, traffic on Carson is still going to be moderately heavy, and all the improvements that have been talked about are going to depend on a city that is currently broke coming up with enough money. So even if things go well, we're looking at several years before Carson Street will be fit for pedestrian life. Curry Street, on the other hand, is ready now. I think making it the true heart of downtown Carson was a brilliant idea.

Saturday afternoon we headed down to downtown Carson to check out the Carson City Sesquicentennial celebration, held in the Nugget's west parking lot (former home of the Arlington Hotel). There was a pretty good turnout at the event, but since it was sprawled out over the whole parking lot it looked a little empty, as you can see in the picture above.

The real star of the event, at least when we showed up, was the 2008-cupcake birthday cake. Wal-Mart generously provided this cake, which was made up of 2008 chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, layed out in the shape of Nevada and frosted blue, white and silver. The cake supposedly arrived at the event around 3:00, and we were a few minutes late so when we got there it had already been dug into. It was still mostly intact, though. Notice the candles in the middle, spelling out 150.

This cake has already been featured on the Cupcakes Take The Cake blog.

Sam sure enjoyed the cupcakes.

We also met up with Fred Nietz of Arlington Group. Fred and his wife Maxine did most of the legwork in putting this celebration together, and during the event he was like a little bee, hopping around from booth to booth. Fred's also a good friend of this blog, and this was the first time we had actually met. Here he is posing with Sam, trying not to get any frosting on him.

The Paul Roth Quintet started playing around 3:30.

Several craft booths were also set up around the parking lot,

Several of the descendants of Carson City's founders were present at the event. The Appeal has a story about how Louise Inman tracked many of them down. I met Leo Mankins, one of the descendants of John B. Mankins, who owned the Eagle Ranch in the 1850s and sold it to Abe Curry. There were also descendants of Curry, John Musser, and Benjamin Green in attendance.

Of course Saturday turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. The thermometer was pushing 100 most of the afternoon, and out there on the baking asphalt it had to have been a good 3-4 degrees hotter. We lasted about half an hour before we had to duck into the shade of the nearby cottonwoods, and Viola even got a little touch of heat exhaustion from the whole outing. My compliments go out to those who were able to survive the whole day out there.

There was lots that I missed yesterday, like the 150th Anniversary Commemorative Medallion, the chili cookoff, most of the Paul Roth Quintet, Abe Lincoln, and getting to meet Guy Rocha, another friend of this blog and the closest thing Carson City has to an "official" historian. Fred was going to introduce me, but he was busy.

One comes in while another leaves town. The Nevada Appeal has a story about Carson City swapping Mervyns, which is closing in a couple months, for Burlington Coat Factory, which opens in about two weeks.

The new 70,000-square-foot Burlington store that will sell the discounted name-brand clothes and home accessories available in its nearly 400 other stores is scheduled to open Aug. 29. The Mervyns company announced Wednesday that the Carson City store would close along with three others in Northern Nevada.

The construction project at Fifth and Division is getting serious. It's a tiny little plot of land, but this excavator has been hard at work for a couple of weeks digging a new hole to China.

I guess this is going to be a house with a full basement, because they've gone down easily fifteen feet here. It looks like they've finally hit bottom; I've been watching them for a couple of weeks, and as the hole gets deeper the piles around the edge get higher. The drawbacks of working in such a cramped space, I guess. I don't envy the operator for having to drive around in there and try to climb out of that hole.

After two-thirds of a year of "celebrating" the Sesquicentennial of Carson City, the time has come for the actual birthday party to be thrown. Tomorrow, Saturday Aug 16, has been designated the official "Sesquicentennial Day", and that is the day all the events are being held. For the complete list of events I'm going to defer to the Nevada Appeal, who have also put together an article on Fred and Maxine Nietz, who are organizing the event and have also been invaluable in sending in materials both to Around Carson and the WNHPC. Fred and Maxine run Arlington Group, which also puts on other events around town like the Rendezvous and the Christmas Tree lighting. They've done a lot of thankless work to pull off this celebration tomorrow, so I want to be one to say thanks.

Sesquicentennial Schedule of Events

9:30 a.m. - History of the Carson City Mint, Robert Nylen, Curator of History at Nevada State Museum
10 a.m.-Noon - Meet President Abe Lincoln at the Nevada State Capitol
10 a.m.-2 p.m. - 30 minute tours of the Capitol Building, on the half-hour
10 a.m.-3 p.m.: Special Minting of the 150th Anniversary Commemorative Medallion in the historic Carson City Mint
10 a.m.-3 p.m.: Gold Panning (outdoors), Nevada State Museum
10 a.m.-3 p.m.: Kid’s Treasure Chest and Rubbings, Nevada State Museum
10 a.m.-3 p.m.: Annual Children's Carnival, Children's Museum of Northern Nevada
11 a.m.: Mark Twain and Coins and Curiosities of the Comstock - Chautauqua by McAvoy Layne, Nevada State Museum
Noon-6 p.m.: Birthday Bash Celebration, Nugget Parking Lot
1 p.m.: Chili Cook-off Tasting and Judging, Nugget Parking Lot
1 p.m.-3 p.m.: Coins in Nevada History, plus Morgan Dollar Grading Seminar by Will Robins, Nevada State Museum
1-5 p.m.: Downtown Beer Crawl
2 p.m.: Chili Cook-off Awards, Nugget Parking Lot
2:45 p.m.: Procession from Children’s Museum to State Museum and then to Nugget Lot. Start at Children’s Museum, south on Plaza, west on Robinson, cross Carson Street to the State Museum, cross Robinson to Nugget Parking Lot
3 p.m.: Drawing for Man’s and Woman’s Coin Watches (value $259 each) at Nevada State Museum
4 p.m.: Abe Lincoln’s connection to Nevada Statehood, Chautauqua by Wally Earhart, Nevada State Museum
3 p.m.: Cutting the Birthday Cake, Nugget Parking Lot
3-9 p.m.: Cactus Jack's Carson City Birthday Party, Cactus Jacks Casino
3:30 p.m.: Paul Roth Quintet, Nugget Parking Lot
7 p.m.: Karson Kruzers Street Dance, Nugget Parking Lot.

News Carson City has the report that the Mervyn's in Carson City, down south by Raley's, will be closing in a couple of months because it wasn't performing strong enough. The whole company went bankrupt a little bit ago, and closing stores is part of their restructuring. So now Carson City is going to have another big gaping empty store, like we don't have enough of those.

More from the RGJ and Nevada Appeal.

More at Bike Carson.

Today, August 12, is supposedly the actual 150th birthday of Carson City. The deed transferring the land Carson sits on over to Abe Curry and his partners was signed on Aug. 12, 1858. Of course at the time there was nothing here but a small trading post and a lot of empty land. The "town" took several months to come together in any form, first by being surveyed and streets laid out in September, then by getting an official Post Office in November.

It's amazing to me that anyone came to live in the new town, especially during those first few months when there was literally nothing here. But Curry was determined to create a town, even if only through sheer determination of will, and the fact that we have streets and houses still here today stands as testament that he got the job done.

Now whether August 12 should even be named the "birthday" at all is in doubt, as this article in the Appeal details. That date comes from the deed, but the deed wasn't filed until four years later. People were living in the valley before Curry & Co came; couldn't they be considered the "founders"? What about the Eagle Ranch itself, which had been established six or seven years already when Curry came in to buy it? When was the first house built in Carson? When was the second house? At what point does three houses in the desert become a "town"?

We could debate this all day, but does it really matter? History is nothing but vapor anyway, tales told around the campfire. Whether that campfire is an actual campfire, or a library, or a computer, doesn't matter. We're still talking about things that are long past, people that are long dead. So I'm happy to point to August 12 as the birthday of Carson City, and to be content to say "Happy Birthday Carson City."

And even though today is the birthday, the party won't be until Saturday. The Appeal also has a rundown on everything that will be happening that day, as does Arlington Events. The main celebration will be at the Nugget's west parking lot (former home of the Arlington Hotel) from noon to 6, with satellite events scattered around at the Capitol, the Museum, and other places downtown.