Northern Nevada Then and Now

Category: Northern Nevada Then and Now

For as long as people have lived here, Carson City and the surrounding areas have been changing. Americans first moved here in the 1850s, and by 1864 the State of Nevada had been created, with several bustling cities. The area hasn’t stopped growing since.

And as long as these cities have existed, there have been photographers here to take pictures of them. That’s what this section of the site is devoted to; the pictures of the past and how much things have changed since they were taken. I’ll be working with old photographs of Carson City, Douglas County, Dayton, Virginia City, even Lake Tahoe and Reno. I’ll go back to the same spot the photo was taken, and retake the picture myself, showing what the area looks like today and how much things have changed.

Most of the “Then” pictures will be historic photos from fifty or a hundred years ago. But some of them could be just a few years or even months old. It depends on what the subject is. Obviously some of the most striking pictures will be ones where everything has been wiped out and the whole neighborhood has changed, or there’s just one relic from the past left in a sea of new development. But it’s also fascinating to see things that have remained undisturbed for a hundred years, or that have only changed in subtle ways.

In any case, this will be a chronicle of the passage of time here in Northern Nevada, and how far we’ve come since those pioneer days. Or even since last week.