Carson City.
Carson City is the county seat of Ormsby County and the capital of Nevada. It is situated in Eagle Valley, immediately east of the high-timbered hills forming the eastern base of the main range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Unlike the majority of Nevada towns, it has a dry, level plain for its site. The city was laid out in 1858 by Major Ormsby and others. The streets conform to the cardinal points of the compass. There being no lack of level land, the streets were made sixty-six and eighty feet wide. Previous to 1858 there was no town where Carson now stands, and only one house, which was at Eagle Ranch, which ranch gave its name to the valley in which it was situated. Afterwards this ranch became better known as King’s Ranch.
Carson City grew rapidly from the start, for it was not only pleasantly situated, but also occupied an advantageous position as a center of trade. For several years in its infancy it derived a good deal of benefit from its trade with the great immigrant trains that yearly rattled in across the “plains;” besides, it was a halting-place for people rushing to the silver mines from the California side of the mountains. In nearly all directions it is surrounded by excellent agricultural and grazing lands. With the regular and scientific opening of the mines Carson became the headquarters of an enormous trade in wood, lumber, and mining timbers, a business it still retains. The city has at present a population of about 4,100.
Carson contains many fine and costly buildings, both public and private. The pride of the city is the State Capitol. It is the most striking structure in the place. The building is handsome architecturally, being well proportioned in all its parts. It also has a very substantial appearance, as it is constructed of stone throughout. This stone is a beautiful, fine-grained sandstone obtained from a quarry at the State prison, about a mile and a half east of the town. The building was erected in 1870. The Capitol occupies the center of a square several acres in extent. This square is surrounded with a handsome and substantial iron fence. The grounds are handsomely laid out and well kept. They are well swarded and contain a great variety of shade and ornamental trees, shrubbery, and flowering plants. The whole is a credit to the State.
The U. S. Branch Mint building is a large, substantial, and imposing structure. It is also of stone, from the State Prison quarry. The building was completed in July, 1869. It has done and is still doing a great deal of work.
The State Orphans’ Home is a large and well-arranged building with a small farm in connection therewith. In this institution a great number of orphan children from all sections of the State are cared for. The home is governed in a paternal way, and the children are well clothed, well fed, and well educated both morally and intellectually.
The town contains several churches of leading denominations, excellent school-houses, and a number of halls of various societies, orders, and lodges. There are half a dozen fine hotels, many large fire-proof stores and business houses, with the usual proportion of neat and attractive retail shops of all kinds, saloons, and the like.
The buildings of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Company are a noticeable feature of the town. The depot buildings are commodious and conveniently arranged, and are always kept neatly painted and in good repair. In the town they have an immense car shop. The building is in large part constructed of iron. In it are a foundry, machine shop, roundhouse, and car manufactory.
Carson has a large box factory and other manufacturing establishments of several kinds. The place has both electrical lights and gas. It is well supplied with pure mountain water, which is led through all the streets under a heavy pressure. The town site has sufficient slope to the eastward to afford good drainage. The city supports two daily newspapers, the Appeal and Tribune, and has a good theater.
A fine large brick building has this year (1889) been erected in the town by the United States Government. It will contain several public offices. It fills a gap in the center of the town that long stood as a staring vacancy—supplies a “long-felt want.”
There are pleasant drives in all directions from Carson, with smooth and level roads. A mile west of town are Shaw’s Hot Springs, with every convenience for either bathing or swimming. The swimming bath is 60 by 24 feet, 4½ feet deep at one end and 5½ at the other.
All visitors to the town of a scientific turn of mind will wish to visit the State prison and grounds, situated a mile and a half east of the place. A portion of the building now occupied as a State prison was built for a hotel by Col. Abe Curry (of whom the State purchased the property), and was of stone, two stories high, 32 feet wide, and 100 feet long. Colonel Curry also excavated and walled up the magnificent swimming bath now connected with the prison and fed by warm springs.
In the floor of the quarry, beneath from fifteen to twenty feet of strata of sandstone, is a stratum of fine-grained stone that is filled with the tracks of all manner of animals and birds, and even one set of tracks supposed to have been made by some prehistoric giant of the human species. There are tracks of elephants, horses, deer, lions, tigers, panthers, giant cranes, and all manner of creatures. The tracks supposed to be human present the appearance of having been made by a large man wearing moccasins of the undressed hide of some animal. All the tracks tend toward a common point, which must have been a spring or small lake.
Omnibuses run to the Hot Springs and the State prison, and stages leave for Lake Tahoe and Genoa on the arrival of trains.
There are several lumber flumes near Carson that are worthy of inspection.