The hotels and apartment houses are always well filled. They are up- to-date, well kept and flourishing; the cafes are constantly being enlarged. The real estate business is also progressive; one may rent splendidly furnished houses, or modest cottages, or apartments at very fair prices. There I first saw the automatic elevator, the kind that you ring for and that runs down by itself and opens its own door; then you get in, press a button at the number you wish to get off at, and the elevator runs itself up to the floor indicated, stops and opens its door. The same apartments have beds that fold up automatically into the wall, leaving nothing in evidence except a beautifully paneled mirror.
The Reno Commercial Club, which was founded in 1907, is made up of a body of the representative men of the state, who are organized to encourage educational and social intercourse, and to aid in social and material up-building of the city and state.
Its executive board is as follows: Charles S. Knight, H. H. Kennedy,
Tasker L. Oddie, B. Adams, Fred Stadtmuller, R. L. Kimmel, E. H.
Walker.
The Club's efforts are continually directed toward the encouragement of new enterprises, the securing of capital for new industries and investments; the dissemination of literature regarding the resources of Nevada; the building of good roads and cooperation with other states for a national highway; the immigration of settlers upon the agricultural lands of the state, more intensive farming, expansion of dairy interests, fruit growing and other agricultural industries.
The Commercial Club is always obliging in extending the courtesy of its information bureaus in matters pertaining to the affairs of the city or state. Write to it!
Nevada has made very broad strides in the direction of agriculture owing to its irrigation development. The Easterners somehow have an idea that Nevada has made very little progress since pre-historic days; that the West is still wild and wooly and consists of cow-boys, cattle ranches and rattle-snakes; but this impression is very erroneous. The picturesque cow-boy is practically a thing of the past, and so is the highwayman; the picturesque stage-coach with its four to six teams is almost forgotten; and I did not see one rattle-snake during all my exploits in the mountains and over the deserts. What has become of all those historic things which we so closely linked with the wild and woolly West of the past? They have retreated into oblivion before the great wheel of progress…..
It is a mistaken idea to imagine that because Nevada is such a mountainous country it is unsuitable for agriculture. There are many broad green valleys, flourishing and producing splendid farm products. This of course is the astonishing result of artificial methods of irrigation. Alfalfa and potatoes are Nevada's greatest crop; wheat, rye, oats and other cereals are also grown. Some of the ranches have splendid orchards consisting of pears, apples, plums, cherries, etc., and the production will undoubtedly increase as greater irrigation developments are introduced.
[Illustration: Trucker River Dam]
What irrigation will do for the parched deserts of the West remains as yet to be seen, but when I stop to consider that all the famous spots of California owe their beauty almost entirely to irrigation, then I dare predict great things for the desert states.
In a 1918 issue of the United States Geographical Survey Press Bulletin is an article which is particularly interesting for the possibilities it suggests at once to the reader for the utilization of waters. It reads as follows: "'Underground Water in Nevada Deserts.'