A History of the Comstock Silver Lode & Mines / Nevada and the Great Basin Region; Lake Tahoe and the High Sierras

by Dan De Quille

Empire City.

This town is situated on the banks of the Carson River, three and a half miles east of Carson, and on the line of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. Empire is pre-eminently a milling town. Here are located the Mexican, Morgan, Brunswick, and Merrimac Mills, all first-class silver reduction works. The town is in Ormsby County, and contains about 700 inhabitants. Each year thousands of cords of wood floated down the Carson River from Alpine County, California, are taken out here. Formerly no fewer than 150,000 cords of wood came down to this town in the drives of a single season. On account of these wood drives Empire was jockularly termed the “seaport” of Nevada. The wood “drives” and the landing of them for a time each year gave employment to a great number of men and teams.

The town contains a number of handsome residences and a few good public buildings.

Genoa.

Genoa is the oldest town in Nevada, and is the place where the first white settlement was made. These settlers were Mormons, and they established a station there as early as 1848. For this reason the place was long known as “Mormon Station.” For several years most of the settlers in the valley and about the town were Mormons. Genoa is the county seat of Douglas County, and is situated in Carson Valley, at a point about 13 miles south of Carson City. Although in a beautiful valley it lies close in against the Sierras, at an altitude of 4,335 feet above the level of the sea. To the westward the main timbered Sierra Nevada Mountain Range rises to a great height, while above its ridge tower many bald, granite peaks. Among these (to the southward) Job’s Peak rises to the height of 10,639 feet.

The town contains a fine court-house, and other handsome public buildings, as school-houses, churches, and halls. There are in the place several good, substantial stores, and business houses and shops. There are many neat dwellings and cottages surrounded with fine gardens and grounds. In the town is published the Genoa Courier, a sprightly weekly paper devoted to the interests of the people of the town and county. In this town was first published (in 1859) the Territorial Enterprise, the pioneer newspaper of Nevada. The paper was moved to Carson in 1860, and thence in a short time to Virginia City, where it was soon made a daily, and where it has ever since been published as such.

Fine ranches lie up and down the valley. A mile and a half south of the town are Walley’s famous hot springs, of which more particular mention will be found in another place. Lake Tahoe forms part of the western boundary of Douglas, and both Glenbrook and Cave Rock are in the county. The Carson River passes near Genoa and through the heart of the county. Genoa contains about 1,000 inhabitants.

Reno.

Reno, on the line of the Central Pacific Railroad, and pleasantly situated on the banks of the beautiful Truckee River, is the county seat of Washoe County. Reno began to be a town in 1868, and under the influence of the Central Pacific Railroad, it grew very rapidly. The town at once became the shipping-point of all goods, machinery, and supplies destined for the Comstock Mines, and for all parts of Storey, Lyon, Ormsby, and Douglas Counties; also for Susanville, Honey Lake Valley, and a great scope of country to the northward. In the days before the completion of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, Reno was filled with teams and stage coaches. The place was a sort of teamsters’ paradise. This was good for the town, but it could not be expected to last forever. The present ambition of the place is to become a railroad and manufacturing center. It has the Virginia and Truckee Road leading southward, while to the northward the Nevada and California is fast advancing to completion.

Reno is the center of one of the finest agricultural and grazing sections in the State, and is a point for the shipment to California of immense numbers of beef cattle. Although there are in the town large and fine reduction works for smelting refractory ores, and two flouring mills, it may be said that hardly a commencement has been made toward the utilization of the immense water-power afforded by the Truckee River at and near the town.