Nevada's Historic Buildings
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Nevada's Historic Buildings

A Cultural Legacy

Ronald M. James, Elizabeth Harvey

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eBook - ePub

Nevada's Historic Buildings

A Cultural Legacy

Ronald M. James, Elizabeth Harvey

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About This Book

In 1991, Nevada's Commission for Cultural Affairs was formed to oversee the preservation of the state's historic buildings and the conversion of the best of them for use as cultural centers. This program has rehabilitated dozens of historic structures valued by their communities for the ways they represent the development of the state and its culture. Nevada's Historic Buildings highlights ninety of these buildings, describing them in the context of the state's history and the character of the people who created and used them. Here are reminders of mining boomtowns, historic ranches, transportation, the divorce and gaming industries, the New Deal, and the innovation of Las Vegas's post-modern aesthetic. These buildings provide a cross-section of Nevada's rich historic and cultural heritage and their survival offers everyone the experience of touching the past.

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Information

Year
2009
ISBN
9780874178067

1

A Territory of Humble Beginnings

Early trappers and explorers crossed what would become Nevada during the 1830s and 1840s. The cliché of the westward movement, as summarized by Frederick Jackson Turner in his renowned frontier thesis, would have farmers follow the pathfinders, from the Atlantic, across the country, to the Pacific Ocean. The Great Basin and the Upper Mojave Desert, however, enjoyed a different history.1 There, rugged mountains and vast deserts did not attract many interested in agriculture.
The lands lying between the deserts of the Great Salt Lake and the Sierra Nevada were first penetrated by mountain men and fur traders in the 1820s. Military adventurers and a handful of California-bound emigrants explored the region in the 1830s and 1840s, blazing trails as they progressed through the Great Basin’s desert wastes. These trails were followed by the next wave of emigrants to traverse the region. This group, composed primarily of gold-seeking “forty-niners,” was interested, like those who had preceded them, more in making their fortunes in California than in settling in the arid deserts lying east of the Sierra Nevada.
A few followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as Mormons, settled around Las Vegas Springs in the 1850s. At the same time, Mormons and others arrived at the eastern foot of the Sierra. In both areas, the newcomers hoped as much to capitalize on the overland trade as to cultivate the area’s too often uncooperative soil. A smattering of other farmers and ranchers tried their luck, but most who braved the harsh environment between the Great Salt Lake and Carson Valley traversed the region as quickly as possible on their way to California. The patterns of the area’s early development departed, therefore, from the norm and stamped the future Silver State with an identity uniquely its own.2
The region’s character was a creation of place and process or, as Turner would put it, of “land and people.”3 Less than a decade elapsed between the founding of the western Great Basin’s first Euro-American settlements and the emergence of its first industrial cities. This rapid leap from rugged frontier settlements to modern industrial communities imparted an ephemeral quality to Nevada’s mining towns. These seemingly precarious outposts of nineteenth-century industrial society were engulfed by vast stretches of wilderness. This juxtaposition of land and people made the Nevada landscape seem more foreboding and omnipresent than the “tamed” lands that harbored the nation’s other nineteenth-century industrial and agricultural communities. In Nevada, nature assumed an eternal and omnipotent tone, whereas its newly established settlements appeared immature and vulnerable.
Perhaps due to this dichotomy, society in the Great Basin assumed a youthful air. Unlike the “mature” communities that developed slowly in other regions of the country, society in Nevada did not take itself too seriously. This aspect of the state’s character—its acceptance of the precariousness of the human condition and the timelessness of the land—became its strength and, ultimately, its destiny. Youthful experimentation, play, and innovation are central to the state’s character, and out of these qualities Nevada’s legendary “freewheeling” morality, cultural ambivalence, and openness to strangers of all types would emerge.
A key to understanding Nevada’s character can be found, then, in its early mining camps. Gold and silver strikes spawned mining throughout the territory. By the time Nevada became a state in 1864, boomtowns were scattered across its landscape, a phenomenon that set it apart from much of the rest of the United States. Although these industrial enclaves distinguished early Nevada from other frontier regions, the contemporary view generally asserted that the place had little other use. The great English explorer Richard F. Burton expressed a popular sentiment when he largely condemned the Great Basin in 1860. “All was desert: the bottom could [not] be called basin or valley: it was a fine silt, thirsty dust in the dry season, and putty-like mud in the spring and autumnal rains. The hair of this unlovely skin was sage and greasewood: it was warted with sand-heaps; in places mottled with bald and horrid patches of salt soil, whilst in others minute crystals of salt, glistening like diamond-dust in the sunlight, covered tracts of moist and oozy mud.”4
In spite of this, even Burton went on to admit there were “small sweet springs.” Still, the fertile lands of the Sacramento Valley just across the mountains and the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 inspired most people to see California as more enticing than the desert wastes that immigrant trails traversed across what would become Nevada. Besides the Mormon pioneers, there was a scattering of other traders and farmers who attempted to support themselves by exploiting commercial opportunities offered by the trade routes crisscrossing the Great Basin. Together, these pioneers established the region’s first non–Native American settlements.
Ironically, it was the exhaustion of California placer mining that inspired renewed attention to the eastern Sierra slope. Many who had crossed the Great Basin on their way to California during the Gold Rush now hoped to exploit new diggings east of the Sierra crest. The region emerged as a last-chance refuge for failed forty-niners. This circumstance initiated a connection between the two sides of the mountain range that frequently made what would become Nevada subservient to and often dependent on its more prosperous neighbor. In time it even inspired an unflattering characterization of the region as a colony of California.5
Although many initially dismissed the Great Basin and the Upper Mojave Desert as uninhabitable, those who settled there became adroit at exploiting the land’s often meager resources. Whether their communities flourished or waned, Nevada’s early residents left their mark on the landscape. Buildings surviving from this early period offer a chance for insight into the first chapter of the territory’s story, beginning more than 150 years ago.
Three of Nevada’s older buildings, located at opposite ends of the state, demonstrate that both success and failure are possible when dealing with fragile resources. These structures are tied by reality or tradition to the territorial period, and the way they have been preserved says a great deal about the way later generations would look at their past and incorporate early remnants of the period into their folklore. Regardless of how people perceive them, the Kiel Ranch in North Las Vegas, the Foreman-Roberts House in Carson City, and the courthouse in Genoa represent early attempts to establish agricultural and trading communities as the backbone of their region’s development.
Not surprisingly, early settlements were situated near reliable sources of water, the desert’s most valuable natural resource.6 The Kiel Ranch, the original site of the Foreman-Roberts House, and Genoa were close to the great overland trade routes traversing the West, tying each place to an important early chapter in Nevada and national history. These three sites also speak to the extremes of Nevada landscape and history. They underscore the diversity of social roles and cultural traditions that flourished on the Nevada frontier.
KIEL RANCH
The Kiel Ranch in North Las Vegas is located in the Mojave Desert, one of the world’s most arid landscapes. The secret of survival in this harsh terrain has always been water, and the Kiel Ranch was ideally situated at one of the Las Vegas Valley’s most reliable artesian springs. This was one of several water sources in the area, the chief of which came to be known as the Las Vegas Springs, about three miles southwest of Kiel Ranch.7
Archaeological evidence suggests Native Americans used these local springs at least two thousand years before Spanish explorers traversed the region. Early-nineteenth-century Mexican adventurers and traders watered at the Las Vegas Springs on their way from New Mexico to California along the Spanish Trail. Later, mountain men and military explorers from the United States found respite at the various watering holes.8
William Bringhurst and his party of Mormon missionaries followed the Spanish Trail into the Las Vegas Valley in June 1855. Unlike many who preceded them, however, they planned to stay. Hoping to expand and establish the extent of “Deseret,” the proposed Mormon empire, the settlers built a fort about three miles east of the springs, dug irrigation trenches, and began raising crops. By dominating local water sources, they were in a position to control trade, agricultural products, and, of course, the water itself. The missionaries imagined that the conversion of the local Southern Paiutes would be a by-product of their labors. Although they succeeded in establishing relatively good relations with the Native Americans, alkaline soil, a drought, squabbling among the Mormons, and an anticipated war between the Mormons of Utah and federal troops caused most of the settlers to leave the valley in 1857. Their buildings and irrigation systems remained, assisting the next wave of immigrants to the valley.9
Image: Many regard the simple adobe structure at Kiel Ranch as one of the oldest buildings in Nevada. Even though it is protected from the elements, the artifact may not survive.
Non-Mormon ranchers and merchants followed, making their mark on the area. One of the most important was Octavius Decatur “O. D.” Gass, who, with partners, established a ranch where the Mormon missionaries had earlier constructed their fort. Gass built a flat-roofed adobe house within the Mormon fort’s ruins, reputedly using an adobe fort wall for one of his buildings. During the 1870s, Gass bought out his partners and supported his family by raising crops, tending cattle, and selling fresh meat, produce, and homemade wine to local miners and emigrants on the Spanish Trail.10
Conrad Kiel, a native of Pennsylvania and one of Gass’s friends, may have moved to the Las Vegas area at his prompting. For a time, Kiel operated a sawmill on Mount Charleston, giving his name to Kyle Canyon (reflecting a misspelling of his name). Kiel’s ranch in the Las Vegas Valley lay about one and a half miles north of Gass’s ranch on the site where the Mormon missionaries had earlier established what they called an Indian farm. Kiel’s development incorporated the remnants of the earlier Mormon settlement. According to local tradition, their legacy included the rudimentary adobe structure that survived into the twenty-first century, making it a contender for the title of oldest existing building in the state.11
Unfortunately, time has obscured verifiable history. Although it is true that adobe was one of the early Mormon settlers’ favorite building materials, it may not be possible to determine when the building was actually constructed. There are, in fact, indications that it may be much younger than previously thought. Architectural historian Jim Steely points out that the use of milled boards and the presence of a gabled roof, when earlier adobe structures, such as those built by Gass, had flat roofs, suggest the Kiel adobe may date to a period shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. That the crumbling building became the focus of folklore underscores the value people place on remnants of the earliest settlement. Legend is often more powerful than fact. Except for the bragging rights of declaring it as one of the oldest buildings in the state, it matters little whether the Mormons, Gass, Kiel, or later farmers built the structure.12
The subsequent history of Kiel Ranch is more easily verified. Given his friendship with Gass, it is likely that Kiel was troubled when Archibald Stewart, a wealthy rancher from Pioche, foreclosed on Gass’s property mortgage in 1881. When Stewart died in a gunfight at Kiel’s ranch in 1884 while Kiel was away, Kiel expressed little sympathy about the incident to newly widowed Helen Stewart.13
The 1884 killing is emblematic of Kiel Ranch’s history. Even before Stewart died at the ranch, it had acquired an unsavory reputation as a sanctuary for gunslingers and other ne’er-do-wells. Stewart’s death furthered this perception, as did a second tragedy at the ranch. In 1900, the late Conrad Kiel’s two sons were found shot dead at the ranch. The coroner ruled the deaths a murder-suicide. Forensic analysis performed during the 1990s by the Anthropology Department of the University of Nevada–Las Vegas challenged this conclusion and suggested, instead, that both of Kiel’s sons had been murdered by an unknown party, although suspicion rests with one of Helen Stewart’s own sons. The story of violent deaths perpetuated the ranch’s reputation into the twentieth century.
After the tragedy of 1900, the Kiel family sold their land to the Utah, Nevada, and California Railroad Company, owned by copper king Senator William Clark of Montana. Although the railroad needed the land principally for its right-of-way and did little to improve its acquisition, better days were in store for the old ranch. In 1911, John S. Park, manager of the First State Bank, acquired the property and turned it into one of the valley’s more glamorous gathering places and successful bulk food producers. He constructed a mansion, known as the “White House,” where he hosted lavish parties, often featuring cultured entertainment. During this period Kiel Ranch assumed the appearance that would be familiar to southern Nevadans for decades. Numerous simple wooden outbuildings and the aging small adobe structure, now probably a cool-storage pantry for produce, were scattered among mature trees, but it was the ranch’s White House that attracted most of the attention. The imposing Craftsman structure with clapboard siding and a pillar-supported porch dominated the complex. During the 1920s, Edward Taylor assumed control of Kiel Ranch, and in 1939, he leased it to Edwin Losee for a new phase of stewardship. As the “Boulderado Dude Ranch,” land that Mormons once cultivated now catered to the Las Vegas Valley’s divorce trade.
In the 1960s, the Kiel Ranch, along with its old adobe structure and the White House, fell into the hands of developers, threatening its survival. In 1974, however, the North Las Vegas Bicentennial Committee purchased the venerable property partly with federal funds and turned it over to the City of North Las Vegas for use as a regional park. The city, claiming it needed to raise funds to develop the site, sold much of the acreage for warehousing and light industry. The sale left the standing buildings and the original spring on a shrinking six-acre island of open space with a declining ability to serve the public.
In 1991, the city began raising funds to restore the remaining structures, securing support from the Commission for Cultural Affairs. Almost immediately, disaster again befell the ill-fated ranch when an arsonist torched the White House, coincidentally within weeks of the award of the commission grant. After these setbacks, only a small bit of the original complex remained, and few held out hope for a park at that location.
Through all of this, the humble adobe building survived. As a work of architecture, it exhibited a modest approach to the problem of securing shelter. Stacked sun-dried bricks formed four walls and supported a sturdy roof, serving the immediate needs of those seeking protection from the elements. Long-term survival may have been hard to imagine. Nevertheless, this building outlasted its neighbors as well as all expectations. Unfortunately, even a tenacious building cannot thwart gravity forever. While the city erected a barnlike shelter above the adobe and searched for ways to preserve the remarkable artifact, one of its walls collapsed. As this rare survivor of the nineteenth century stumbles into a new millennium, its future remains uncertain. It has yet to achieve the 1970s Bicentennial Committee’s vision of becoming a cultural center or the intent of the grants from the state Commission for Cultural Affairs, but where there is survival, hope lingers.
FOREMAN-ROBERTS HOUSE
The rudimentary nature of the adobe structure, which so clearly illustrates the earliest history of southern Nevada, contrasts with the Foreman-Roberts House in Carson City. This building clearly dates to the territorial period, but like the Kiel Ranch adobe, its specific origin became a matter of folklore. For decades, local tradition maintained that what eventually became known as the Roberts House was built in 1859. Research has demonstrated the building in fact dates to 1863 during the Nevada—not the Utah—territorial period. In addition, logic challenges the widely held belief that the house was transported on the Virginia and Truckee (V&T) Railroad. The narrow right-of-way would not have accommodated the house, which was more likely moved from Washoe Valley to Carson City by wagon. The manner in which the Foreman-Roberts House, like the Kiel Ranch adobe, became part of oral tradition underscores both the enthusiasm of later generations who revered early remnants and the problems inherent in researching the real stories of older buildings.14
In spite of the folklore and its deviation from fact, it is possible to understand much of ...

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