Courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives, here’s a couple of undated pix taken from atop the old Capital Building.

This one features a straight-to-the-West shot of C Hill and the Sierra Highlands at the end of First Street*.

This one is towards the northwest and I want to say it’s a tad more modern, but that looks like an old-fashioned wooden fence at the edge of the grounds on Carson and Musser, and the other picture has the more recent metal fence in the lower right hand corner. There are electric lines and poles in the first that are absent in the second.

What do y’all thinK? It does make for an interesting guessing game.

(*Ah, but there is no First Street in Carson City, you say if you’re an old-timer. The story I heard years ago was the State wanted close off First Street and put up what was then the Nevada Supreme Court building but met resistance by a local land owner who liked the easy access to the main drag. The old grouch, who I was told was a Supreme Court justice, gave way when promised that First Street would be renamed after him, and so King Street was born. Possibly an urban legend about urban development.)

Here’s a rare find from the U.S. Treasury web site where they list old buildings affiliated with the country’s mints, past and present. As most northern Nevadans know, Carson City had a federal mint to process Comstock Lode silver mined during the late 1800s; today the Mint is the Nevada State Museum. Less that a mile south (as the crow flies) is the old State Printers building whose architecture is said to mimic the U.S. mint:

Old Nevada State Printing Office, Carson City, designed by M.J. Curtis and S.Pisley. The tall arched windows, rough-faced stone, and gable roofs demonstrate its affinities with the Mint. The Old Printing Office and Capitol are closely related to Mullet’s branch mint: all three are organized around a central rectangular mass with projecting wings, employ gabled roofs and rough-faced stone, and utilize tall, narrow windows.

Today this is the south annex of the Nevada State Library and Archives. The bottom floor holds an art gallery for roaming exhibits and a room for the State Constitution, and the top floor has offices for the State Historic Preservation Office, as well as the University of Nevada, Reno, field office.

On this day celebrating Nevada Day, here’s another pix courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives. This is the Senator Cafe somewhere in downtown Carson City. Is it an older version of the Pinecone Cafe found here on Around Carson? It isn’t in this picture to the south of the old capital building. One of the archivists was thinking that tall building in the back housed the Oldfellows Lodge directly north of the current capital complex. Interesting stuff.

Hey, Y’all. Been away from making with the fun and am now back for a few minutes before I delve into the second job stuff known as grading papers. Only got thirty students spread over three classes, so it’s beyond my comprehension how “real” college teachers do it with five or six classes of forty-plus students each. While I’ve been away…

Waddya know about that American League Series? They’re playing some real baseball over there, not like the Colorado Rockies sweeps of their two post-season opponents. Will Boston survive today to force a Game 7 for tomorrow? If they do, you can thank Manny Ramirez for being one cagey and clever dude. Most folks mistook his “who cares if we lose?” remarks as another sign of unrealistic connection to the importance of the games and the Boston fans. In my mind, Manny was being a locker room leader by focusing the media spotlight on him and taking it off of his teammates. Don’t be fooled: he wants to beat his former team badly. This was not another case of “Manny being Manny”; this was Manny putting the team on his back and trying to taking them to the World Series. It might just work, too.

In local news, state gaming and tax revenues came in at far lower than expected levels and the state’s executive branch is scrambling for money. They instituted a hiring freeze on state-funded positions and directed all administrators (except K-12 and Public Safety) to draw up plans for an immediate 5% budget cut, and in the spirit of camaraderie (and obedience), everybody jumped in and is doing just that. Almost everybody. Perennial curmudgeon NSHE Chancellor Jim Rogers said his eight campuses are barely scraping by as it is and will not cut back any further. Based on my time as a full-time and part-time employee, he’s got a point. The NSHE receives repeated mandates from all levels to better prepare and educate Nevada’s adult populace but often the money does not follow the mandates, so teachers and administrators must plug twelve leaks in the dam with only seven fingers. The reality is while the NSHE does operate outside the executive branch, the State writes the checks on a quarterly basis and can reduce those checks as needed. I promise you that while the Governor and Chancellor are taking publicly bites out each other, the presidents are making plans. And the dams will keep leaking in the meantime.

There was good news from the NSHE: in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, there’d been a proposal to deputize, train and arm on-campus workers to act as a volunteer reserve police force in times of crisis. Fortunately, the majority of the Board of Regents had a dose of common sense and voted it down. There are higher-education faculty members who’ve never left school and have had to function in the “real” world. The possibility of giving Berettas to those folks made me a tad nervous. I would have had more confidence in Barney Fife’s gun-handling skills.

Reality check: today is Saturday, October 20, 2007. Osama bin Laden was been free of incarceration, persecution, and imprisonment in the 2,230 days since September 11, 2001.

A recent state ethics committee opinion barred a county employee from serving on her county commission, stating she could have direct budgetary influence over her employers. It’s understandable but a darn shame if the opinion evolves into an official stance barring all public employees from holding office. Nevada’s had a long history of citizen legislators only because there are very few full-time public offices on the payroll. Those who serve are rarely fully compensated for their time and energy and, often, lose money in the deal, but they do it because it needs to be done. If the public employee is barred from office, the available pool of willing volunteers will shrink dramatically to our sorrow.

Yet another link to old Nevada passed on this week. Joey Bishop was the last surviving member of the 1960s Rat Pack that brought visibility and crowds to Las Vegas when it was barely a spot in the road. You have to put the times in perspective. The shows that he and Frank/Sammy/Dean/Peter gave were not for thousands in big arenas, but for dozens or hundreds in relatively small showrooms, so folks were able to get up close and personal with these Hollywood legends. In today’s Reno and Lake Tahoe casinos, you’re more likely to see a “B” level star on stage in the outdoors parking lot than in a cozy room with a live orchestra. Them was the days.

Don’t have much time these days for entertainment, but watched a movie last night that you’ve got to make time for: Surf’s Up. Yes, it’s another one of those silly CGI-animation specials, but the makers spent time on the script and it really feels like one of those old surfing documentaries. Well worth your time. (And Transformers didn’t suck as badly as I thought it would.)

Madison Wolverine Update: our commissioner is more than fully-employed with his day job (I can understand that), so I don’t have a current record, but I’m fairly certainly the Wolverines lost last weekend and have a losing record for the first time this season. Things don’t get easier this week with Amargosa hosting the game. The team is holding on as best it can for the return of injured WR Andre Johnson and suspended RB Chris Henry, both of whom should be back in the next couple of weeks. Wolverines! [Edit: the report is out and we’re at .500 and out of first place. Still a hard game ahead.]

I endorsed Dean Heller as Nevada’s Congressman for District 2 in hopes that he’d keep an open mind, watch out for the little people, and not be a Bush-administration puppet. Wrong. According to the Washington Post (subscription required), he votes with the Bushies nearly 90% of the time and his recent SCHIP stance really burns me. He also voted against reducing troop levels and repealing tax cuts for oil companies, some of whom are reaping record-level profit levels. I won’t make that mistake twice.

Finally, got to give a shout-out to Deborah Kerr of the King and I and An Affair to Remember. She was a classy lady, the consummate professional, and sexy as hell in an old-school kind of way. Here’s the famous picture of her and Burt Lancaster making out on the beach in From Here to Eternity. Check out who’s on top. That’s all you need to know about her. Thanks, Deb.

Courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives

Any idea who these folks are, and when/where the picture was taken? Here’s the undated/nonannotated pix in its original size.

In this entry, Sam mentioned living in Veteran’s Housing in Carson City in the early 1950s. The crackerjack staff at the Nevada State Library and Archives (NSLA) dug up these pictures taken by John Nulty around 1951. As Sam and Scott point out, these homes rested on the site of the current Carson City Sheriff’s and courthouse complex bordered by Harbin to the east and possibly Pratt or Roop to the west. I think one or more of the buildings survived to the 80s or 90s where it housed the Police Athletic League for youths (boxing, in other words).

All photo credits to the John Nulty Collection at the NSLA. Eight more pix after the jump:

Proceed at your own risk »

The Nevada State Library and Archives (NSLA) has more than a few pictures of Old Nevada from way up there.  Here’s a compilation of some taken around Eagle Valley. All photos courtesy of the NSLA:

Real old Carson City. The legend says this is 1875.

A very high view of Carson.

Carson City from the southeast looking northwest. Possibly from the same John Nulty set that produced this picture:

The south end of town. Fifth Street is going off to the left and today’s Highway 395 is going straight up (south). South Curry Street is snaking around the base of C Hill.

Carson City and Lake Tahoe taken from the east side looking west.

Almost the same shot, except check out the snow on the hills. Photo credit says: “photographed at 13,500 ft. by ADRIAN ATWATER - April 28, 1969.”

Another east shot, though much lower. Could those buildings in the foreground center be an apartment complex?

Brushfires have long plagued the West, and Man’s response to endangered homes and buildings has been varied and most often effective.

One example is the below, taken from south C Hill during the Fifties or Sixties. I’m no aircraft historian, but that could be a SBD Dauntless or a TBF Avenger, aircraft-carrier-based bombers that saw action in the Pacific during World War II. Both could carry over a ton of bombs and armament, so it’s not a stretch to imagine they were re-engineered to support firefighters after the war.

Again, I’m not a expert, but it seems a squadron of either plane could do a much faster and more effective job of brushfire suppression that some of the bigger planes that can’t fly close to the ground due to their size and the area’s mountainous terrain.

(Here’s a larger version.)

Edit: The Bride pointed me to Guy Rocha’s online article about costly fires in Nevada and he had this to say about the below:

Photograph of plane dropping fire retardant on “C” Hill in Carson City, ca 1964-1966, courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives. The view is toward the north/northeast.

Courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives

Rich Moreno of Backyard Traveler fame has a blog. Formerly with Nevada Magazine, he is one of the preeminent experts on all things Silver State. (He is also one of the The Bride’s former colleagues from her time at the Nevada Commission on Tourism.)

Hi, Rich!!!

(And thanks to Around Carson for finding TBT’s blog.)

The Archives has this magnificent picture of Eagle Valley from the Comstock Era. If you look closely at the extra large photo, you’ll find the Capital building in the center with Fifth Street heading east on the right and King Street going west in the center left.

Courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives

When was this taken?:
- The federal building on Carson and Telegraph is not there. It was completed in 1890.
- St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is the white building with the steeple on the left and was completed in 1868.
- The current museum is on the far left and is doing business as the Carson City Mint. It opened in 1869.

[More editing: As Scott and Sam point out in the comments, that’s the Methodist Church on Musser and Division. The Episcopal Church is hiding behind the Central School to the north.]

And here’s a couple of pictures from this morning from nearly the same place, taken without the benefit of a wide angle lens and a wool coat from the 19th Century.

Edit: Another pix of the valley with some guy standing in the way (holding the old Eagle Valley pix we used to orient ourselves).

Here’s those same rocks looking up from the valley floor.