rs e y by Dennis M
of A 1913 postcard scene looks south on Center Street from Second Street toward the river, before the construction of the bridge.
A year by year look at the city’s history
L
ast Saturday, our colleagues across town at the Reno Gazette Journal honored Reno by making the theme of their annual charity Fantasies in Chocolate gala “A Salute to 150 Years in the Biggest Little City.” Our first article on Reno’s sesquicentennial dealt with events city officialdom would rather forget. We expect to run a third piece on city government policies and their role in city history. This week, we take a lighter approach, reporting some of the little-known events in city history, and the Gazette Journal plays occasional roles. Readers will not find many benchmarks here, like breaking news or big disasters, though there are tragedies. Instead, we tried to give a sense of what life was like in the Truckee Meadows—good and bad—for its people. This is an unlikely possibility, given the terrific population turnover in Nevada that leaves us with less than 20 percent native born, but we hope that people will find links to their past.
1868
The Union Pacific Railroad, after establishing a station, divided the area into streets and auctioned off 400 lots, creating a city.
1869
A California newspaper reported, “RENO - This place has, by its position on the Railroad, drawn almost the entire trade of Honey Lake Valley from Oroville and other points in the Sacramento Valley.”
1870
Western Nevada was hit with an earthquake, and although felt in Reno, the Reno Crescent reported that “the shock was far heavier at and about Glen Dale.”
1871
The First Congregational Church was organized in Reno.
10
|
RN&R
|
11.21.18
1872
The Washoe County grand jury praised District Attorney W. M. Boardman for ignoring an order by the county commission to drop a tax lawsuit against the scofflaw Central Pacific Railroad corporation.
on some Western communities, the Journal commented, “Had they pursued a liberal policy toward the people of Nevada they would be blessed to-day, instead of cursed, as they are.”
1873
1876
1874 1875
1877
A patent application filed by Reno tailor Jacob Davis—the application fee paid by Levi Strauss—on Davis’s copperriveted dungarees was approved, the patent granted. Reno’s Nevada State Journal went daily after three years as a weekly. Commenting on the discriminatory rates imposed by the unregulated Central Pacific Railroad
A theatrical manager brought his touring company to Reno, ran up bills, then vanished with the receipts, and the company players said they would go ahead with a performance in hope of satisfying all the claims. The Reno Gazette argued that the strawberry festival for the benefit of the library, which was organized by local “ladies,” had gone so well it proved that women were competent.
1878
A few days after a Native American was murdered in Reno, a procession of tribal family and friends passed through Reno to the Hillside Cemetery where the body of the victim was exhumed, removed from its coffin, and then reburied as part of tribal rites.
1879
Gazette: “The only remaining child of Mr. And Mrs. Van Meter died this morning after an illness of thirty-seven days. This makes the third child Mr. and Mrs. Van Meter have lost by the dreaded scourge, scarlet fever. The funeral sermon will be preached at the family residence on the Truckee Meadows to-morrow morning at 11 o’clock, after which the little one will be brought to town and laid away with its brother and sister.”
the Nevada Mental Health Institute, built along the Truckee east of Reno at a cost of $80,000 ($2,062,769.75 in 2017 dollars), was completed.
1883
Gazette: “The class of immigrants now coming west are not as thrifty and intelligent as men and women should be to settle up and make prosperous a new country. From 100 to 200 men, women and children pass Reno every night … too many of them are from the lower classes of foreign depression: They come here believing that any change is better than no change.”
1884
Nevada’s only university was moved from Elko to Reno, although the first building was not finished until 1885.
1880
1885
1881
1886
McClelland and Simpson of Reno shipped some Truckee trout to the famed Fulton Fish Market in New York. Scientific American reported on the annual Fulton Fish Market trout exhibition in New York, saying that certain specimens were “specially worthy of notice … Truckee river trout, a large black spotted fish which grows from six to ten pounds in weight. Lake Tahoe trout, also a black spotted fish, but much larger than the Truckee river trout.”
1882
The first state mental hospital in Nevada, now
The Nevada and Oregon Railroad, headquartered in Reno, was sold in foreclosure to the Moran Brothers, an investment group. Journal: “PRINTERS B B CLUB —Last evening the Reno Prints formed a Base Ball Club
