A Short History of Carson City

Richard Moreno

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780874178548
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Nevada's capital city is today a charming, modern community, with an unusually eventful past. A Short History of Carson City traces its history from its origin as a mid-nineteenth-century trading post to its rise as the political center of Nevada. Here are the hard-working citizens and colorful characters, the political and business decisions, and the evolving economy that helped shape it. This is the first comprehensive historical account of a thoroughly modern state capital with its roots deep in Nevada's turbulent past.

Chapter One

Becoming Abe Curry’s Town

Now, therefore, be it known, that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in accordance with the duty imposed upon me by the Act of Congress aforesaid, do hereby declare and proclaim that the said State of Nevada is admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states.

In witness whereof, I have hereunder set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN (October 31, 1864)

Carson City founders Abraham Curry, John J. Musser, and Francis M. Proctor (later joined by Benjamin F. Green, Proctor’s father-in-law, who became a minor partner) would undoubtedly be proud of what has become of their little settlement. It is unlikely they could have foreseen the sprawling campus of state government buildings, the rows of houses lined up like dominoes, or the complex grid of paved streets and highways that would eventually cover the acres of sagebrush, greasewood, and grassland that they purchased in August of 1858.

However, the three weren’t the first to set eyes on the Eagle Valley area in which Carson City is located. The Washoes were there much earlier; the valley served as a wintering place for many centuries. The tribe would head to Lake Tahoe in the summer, where they could find abundant fish and game, then move to the lower elevations of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada during the colder months. A dirt road that leads between Carson City and Lake Tahoe—now known as King’s Canyon Road—is believed to originally have been a traditional trail for the Washoes to travel between the two places. In the 1850s, fortune seekers from California used the path to travel to Virginia City, after fabulously rich silver deposits had been discovered there. In 1863, it became a toll road between Carson City and Lake Tahoe and in the early twentieth century the route was incorporated into the transcontinental Lincoln Highway. In recent decades, it has been largely abandoned and is slowly returning to its original state as a walking trail.

Eagle Valley was not the first place settled in the land that became Nevada. In 1850, a handful of prospectors had begun placer mining in the Gold Canyon area, above present-day Dayton, and a group of Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), led by Captain Joseph DeMont, established a crude trading post in the Carson Valley (near present-day Genoa). The post, which became known as Mormon Station, supplied emigrant wagon trains and groups heading to California with provisions and goods. At the end of the summer, DeMont and his companions, including Hampton S. Beatie and Abner Blackburn, sold the business to a California trader and relocated to Salt Lake City.

In her book, Devils Will Reign, historian Sally Zanjani speculated that Beatie probably told Colonel John Reese, a Mormon for whom Beatie worked as a store clerk, about the success of the trading post. Intrigued, Reese and a small group set out from Salt Lake City in May 1851 with thirteen wagons carrying supplies, food, seeds, farm equipment, and other goods. A month later, he arrived in the Carson Valley and put down roots. According to Zanjani, Reese was astounded by how much money he made selling his crops—primarily turnips—to the emigrants and nearby miners and soon added other services, including a blacksmith shop.

Eagle Valley Pioneers

In late 1851, after unsuccessfully placer mining in Gold Canyon, Joseph Barnard, Frank Barnard, Frank Hall, W. L. Hall, A. J. Rollins, and George Follensbye staked a claim on land in the valley north of Carson Valley and established a trading post and ranch. They named the area Eagle Valley (and the post Eagle Station), after Frank Hall shot and killed an eagle, which he stuffed and mounted over the trading post’s doorway. The station, believed to have been located near the present-day site of Fifth and Thompson streets in Carson City, was the first permanent settlement in the valley and was also known as the Eagle Ranch. The owners planted crops and grew hay, which they sold to travelers heading to California.

While records are sketchy, other early Eagle Valley pioneers included Dr. Benjamin L. King, who established a small resort in the valley in 1852 (a canyon to the west of the valley bears his name), and Jacob Rose, who built a house to the north (Rose Canyon is named after him) and owned land in Washoe Valley.

In 1854, according to Thompson & West’s History of Nevada 1881, the Barnard brothers, the Halls, Rollins, and Follensbye sold their holdings (which included the trading post and ranch) to Colonel Reese and E. L. Barnard (evidently no relation to the Barnard brothers), who, in turn, sold it to several Mormon families. Three years later, Mormon leader Brigham Young called the members of his congregation to Salt Lake City to defend the city against an approaching military force sent by President James Buchanan to confront the Mormons and re-affirm federal jurisdiction over the region. (The conflict ended peacefully for the most part in July 1858 when Young agreed to step down as the territorial governor and accept federal oversight.)

As the Mormon settlers hastily prepared to head to Utah, they were forced to sell their ranches and equipment at bargain prices to the remaining non-Mormons (referred to as “Gentiles” by church members). In some cases, it has been reported that Mormon property was simply taken over by the non-Mormons, who refused to pay anything for the land and other valuables left behind. In 1856, Mormon elder Orson Hyde, a prominent leader in Genoa (he named the community) who was returning to Salt Lake City, leased plots of land and a new sawmill he and several partners had completed in Washoe Valley to Jacob Rose and R. D. Sides for $10,000. He reported receiving mules, a worn harness, two yokes of oxen, and a wagon as an advance on the payment. However, after Hyde’s departure, Rose and Sides apparently felt little obligation to pay the debt.

In 1862, an angry Hyde fired off a letter, now known as Orson Hyde’s Curse, that demanded immediate payment of $20,000 (what he estimated the property was worth) and threatened that if he was not properly compensated, “You shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquakes and with floods, with pestilence and with famine until your names are not known amongst men.”

With the departure of the Mormons, much of Eagle Valley fell into the hands of John Bracken Mankins, a man described in Thompson & West as “an old pirate, mountaineer and frontiersman” who was “a rough, passionate, illiterate fellow; given to quarreling with his neighbors.” Mankins reportedly acquired the Mormon holdings for very little money and gained ownership of a large portion of the valley, which, by mid-1858, still had only a handful of residents, including Mankins and his family (four daughters and an adopted Indian boy), Dr. King and his family, the Jacob Rose family, the Mark Stebbins family, and the Samuel Nevers family.

Governing Utah Territory

The Latter-day Saints (Mormons) arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in July 1847. As a result of religious persecution, members of the religion had been forced to leave Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846. An advance party of 143 men and women, led by church leader Brigham Young, arrived in the Salt Lake Valley (1,040 miles from Illinois), on the western front of the Wasatch Range, and began setting up a community for the faithful. The Utah Territory, with Brigham Young as the territorial governor, was created as part of the Compromise of 1850 (legislation designed to resolve territorial disputes and balance the interests of the slave-holding states and those that opposed slavery). The original boundaries of the territory encompassed all of present-day Utah as well as much of Nevada and small portions of Colorado and Wyoming.

Given the enormous size of the territory, it was no surprise that territorial authorities gave little thought to establishing any type of government in what is now western Nevada. In November 1851, a provisional government was organized at Mormon Station in Carson Valley, which, according to The Political History of Nevada (1996), was an indication that residents either “ignored the fact that they were subject to the laws of the Territory of Utah or they considered those laws inadequate.” The settlers’ government, which conducted six public meetings between November 1851 and August 1854, declared that its goal was to protect individual property rights as well as create a law enforcement and court system. They also crafted a petition to Congress requesting to be separated from the Utah Territory.

As more people settled into the western portion of Utah Territory, primarily the Carson Valley, it became increasingly difficult for the provisional government to accommodate their needs. There was also continued tension between Mormon and non-Mormon residents. Some began to promote annexation to the adjacent state of California while others pushed for a new territory. In response, Utah’s territorial legislature created Carson County in 1854; it was an attempt to establish a more formal government for the region and, it was widely believed, to maintain Mormon control of the area. The jurisdiction extended over more than twenty thousand square miles and included today’s Carson City as well as Douglas, Lyon, and Storey counties, along with large portions of Washoe, Pershing, Mineral, and Churchill counties and pieces of Nye and Esmeralda counties. Mormon Station (renamed Genoa in 1855) was designated the county seat.

Territorial officials, however, did not immediately organize Carson County or send representatives, so once again there was talk of setting up an alternative form of government. Finally, in 1855, U.S. District Court judge George P. Stiles was named to preside over legal matters in Carson County, and Orson Hyde, one of the twelve apostles of the Mormon church (the church’s primary governing council), was appointed probate judge. The two men, who arrived in Genoa in June, were tasked with setting up the county government.

Hyde held elections on September 20 to fill the county offices. According to Sally Zanjani, “All the Mormon candidates [Hyde] chose won, confirming the settlers’ fears of Mormon domination.” The election did little to resolve the simmering ill will between the two groups. One Carson Valley resident, Thomas Knott, had so little regard for the Mormons that when his son, Elzy, was killed by a Mormon during an argument over a saddle, Thomas Knott refused to bury the young man in the town cemetery because it contained deceased Mormons. He laid him to rest in his own backyard instead.

Throughout the following year, additional members of the Latter-day Saints arrived in Carson Valley and Eagle Valley. During elections in August 1856, Mormons had clearly become the majority and swept all county offices except one (assessor-treasurer). In early 1857, in response to the difficulty in maintaining jurisdiction over Carson County because it was so far away, the Utah Territorial Legislature voted to attach remote Carson County to Great Salt Lake County. All court and county records were moved to Salt Lake City, which was some five hundred miles away. This effectively left the region without a functioning local government.

In mid-1857, however, the Mormon era came to an abrupt end when Brigham Young called his followers back to Salt Lake City to prepare for conflict with the advancing federal army. According to The Political History of Nevada (1996), the “departure of the Mormons resulted in the almost complete depopulation of the Truckee Meadows and Washoe and Eagle valleys.”

With the exodus of the Mormons from the eastern Sierra, the region was once again largely on its own when it came to legal matters and law enforcement. Major William Ormsby, a relative newcomer who had arrived in Genoa in the spring of 1857, immediately saw the possibilities for political and financial gain. Ormsby, along with his friend Judge James Crane, another recent arrival, began to promote the creation of a new territory, carved from the Utah Territory. Ormsby, who was born in Pennsylvania, had previously participated in adventurer William Walker’s ill-fated attempt in 1856 to lead a small army of expansion-minded Americans in a takeover of Nicaragua (and then seek to have his conquered territory, along with several other South American countries, admitted into the Union as slave-holding states). After that effort failed, Ormsby relocated to Genoa to seek his fame and fortune. For several months while living there, he and his wife took care of two of the daughters of the Paiute Chief Winnemucca. One of the daughters, Sarah, later wrote a book about her people’s plight; it was the first book ever written by a Native American woman.

Ormsby and Crane quickly became leaders of the effort to create a new territory from the lands of the far western Utah Territory. In April 1857, Ormsby organized a petition addressed to President James Buchanan requesting the creation of a separate territory. The initiative was endorsed by California’s governor and state legislature, and signed by Ormsby on behalf of local residents. In August 1857, Crane was elected to represent the group in Washington, D.C. According to Sally Zanjani, Ormsby and Crane’s efforts fizzled after the conflict between the federal government and the Mormons was resolved in mid-1858. Congress moved on to other issues and the importance of creating a new, non-Mormon territory on the eastern slope of the Sierra faded for at least a little while.

Curry, Green, Musser, and Proctor, Inc.

Sometime in 1855, Ohio businessman Abraham “Abe” Curry and his eighteen-year-old son, Charles, arrived in San Francisco to, like so many others, seek their fortunes in California. During the next two years, Curry and his son ran a variety of businesses in northern California mining camps, including a bowling alley in the mining camp of Red Dog. In 1857, Curry and his son traveled to Downieville, where rich ore had been discovered. There, they invested in real estate and worked as building contractors. While living in Downieville, Abe Curry became friends with Benjamin F. Green, John J. Musser, and Francis “Frank” M. Proctor. According to Curry’s biographer, Doris Cerveri, Green was a partner in a jewelry and watchmaking shop, and served as Sierra County treasurer in 1857, while Proctor was an attorney, active in local politics and married to Green’s daughter. Musser was also a lawyer and had served as district attorney of Sierra County in 1856–57.

In the spring of 1858, Abe and Charles Curry, Musser, and Proctor, as well as Frank Green, brother of Benjamin, and two friends, W. B. Hickock and Captain William T. Ferguson, journeyed into western Utah Territory to determine its investment potential. Cerveri reported that the group visited Steamboat Hot Springs, Washoe Lake, Franktown, and Genoa, becoming convinced of the region’s possibilities before returning to Downieville.

In July 1858, the two Currys, Frank and Benjamin Green, Musser, and Proctor headed by stagecoach to Genoa, intending to purchase land to build a store. While there are no records of what happened, popular legend has it that Curry offered $1,000 for a corner lot in Genoa but was turned down by the owners. Unable to find anything else suitable for their plans, the group traveled north to Eagle Valley. The area was not as desirable as the green, grassy Carson Valley because its natural vegetation had been overgrazed by the dozens of wagon trains that had passed through on their way to California. Curry and his partners most likely found a valley that consisted of dry, dusty flats interspersed with clumps of sagebrush and desert grasses.

The group approached John Mankins, owner of much of the land in the valley, and offered to purchase his holdings. According to former Nevada state archivist Guy Louis Rocha, who has examined the original deed, on August 12, 1858, Mankins sold about 865 acres plus a separate one-half section claimed and taken up by George Mankins (John’s brother) to Curry, Proctor, and Musser for $1,000, for a down payment of $300 and the balance to be paid within thirty days. Benjamin Green witnessed the transaction and, reportedly, was later given half of his son-in-law’s (Proctor’s) one-third share. Members of the Mankins family still live in Carson City and there is a John Mankins Park at 3051 Oak Ridge Drive in Carson City.

The Curry-Musser-Proctor group hired John F. Long of the nearby community of Chinatown (now called Dayton) to survey and lay out, or plat, a town site. According to Cerveri, Long didn’t think much of the site and told Curry and his group to sell and look for a place that had more potential. Cerveri wrote that Curry also offered to give Long property in Eagle Valley in lieu of his fee for the survey. Long allegedly rejected the deal, saying he wo...