Tag: sesquicentennial

Fred Nietz has published a bunch of photos from last Saturday's Sesquicentennial event on his Flickr site. These photos are a little more varied than mine, since he was there all day, rather than the half hour I lasted under that beating sun.

I've picked out some highlights, but to see all the photos start here and keep clicking Next.

Loading up the cupcakes at Wal*Mart

Assembling the cupcakes

Cutting the ribbon on the cake

Guy Rocha and Mayor Marv

One of the teams in the chili cookoff

Leo Mankins and his wife Annette. Leo is a descendant of John Mankins, who sold the Eagle Ranch to Abe Curry in 1858

Fred with a descendant of Abe Curry

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today the Nevada Appeal has a pretty great front-page article tracking down the oldest building in Carson City. Everyone seems to agree that it is the Stewart-Nye House, at the corner of King and Minnesota streets. This house was built around 1860 for William Stewart, who later went on to become the first U.S. Senator from Nevada. He sold the house in 1862 to James Nye, who was the first governor of Nevada when it was still a territory, before it became a state. So that makes this house Nevada's first governor's mansion. Mark Twain was a close associate of Nye's (his brother Orion Clemens was Nye's secretary), and Twain would often come over to the house for cigars and brandy. The house is now home to the Taggart and Taggart law firm. It is usually a stop on the Carson City Ghost Walk, since the presence of an old woman has been seen upstairs after hours. See my 2005 Ghost Walk report for more details.

The article then goes on to chronicle some of the other old buildings in Carson, ones that aren't the oldest but are still pretty damn old. State Archivist Guy Rocha names the building at 314 S. Carson St., home to Caterpillar's Hookah Lounge, as the oldest commercial building in town. That one can be seen on the left here.

It's also in this photo from 1984, moonlighting as a pawn shop.

The other history article in the newspaper today is a look by Trent Dolan back at an 1876 issue of the Carson Daily Appeal, including a report on General Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn.

There were three Carson City history articles in the Nevada Appeal yesterday. They had Part 2 of A traveler's impressions of Carson City, written by Caroline M. Churchill in the 1870s. There is also an article about the first days of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, with a look back at how the newspapers covered the progress of the railroad as it was built. The first photo on the page is labeled wrong, though. It shows Locomotive #20, The Tahoe, and says it's #80 (the highest the V&T ever got was #27). It also says it's now on display in Virginia City, when the Tahoe is actually in Pennsylvania right now. #18 is in VC.

The last "bonus" article is one on one of the founders of Carson City, B.F. Green. Previously there were no known photos of Green, and nobody thought one would ever be found. But then an armchair historian in Carson City managed to track one down, in the care of some descendants in Wisconsin. So the Nevada Appeal printed the photo, one where Green is sitting in a portrait studio with a few of his relatives. The paper circled his face and everything so you could pick him out, but there was one problem: the paper identified the wrong guy!! Read through the comments for the corrections to the paper's captions, sent in by Joni Vella of Wisconsin.

The Nevada Appeal today has a look at the July 4th festivities from 1898, and A traveler's impressions of Carson City from the 1870s.

Guy Rocha: Is the capitol dome really silver?

Trent Dolan: How to live on nothing a year, and other information from the papers of July 1878.

The Nevada Appeal yesterday had a look back at the Morning Appeal from 1878, with stories therein about the 4th of July party and the Sutro Tunnel. They also had a look forward to August 16, when downtown Carson will be celebrating the Sesquicentennial with a variety of events. They linked to Fred Nietz' eventsnevada.com, where there is a schedule of events posted for that day. Apparently Abraham Lincoln will be making an appearance, so we should all show up for that.