Category Archives: Nevada History

Author Paul Franklin to lecture on Carson City Mint assayers June 15

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Nevada State Mseum Carson CityYou may know that the Carson City Mint produced coins bearing the famed CC mint mark, but did you know it was a United States assay office?

Learn about this history of the Carson City Mint at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 15, at the Nevada State Museum, 600 N. Carson St. in Carson City. Paul Franklin, a retired semiconductor industry executive and frequent lecturer at Stanford University, will talk about Carson City Mint assayers and their role in analyzing and refining gold and silver. Continue reading →

Frances Humphrey Lecture Series at the Nevada State Museum

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Lectures in this popular series are presented on the fourth Thursday of each month from 6:30 – 8 pm at the state Museum. Doors open at 6 pm; $8 for adults; free for museum members & ages 17 & under Reserve a seat for each lecture 30 days in advance on our website events page. For more info: (775) 687-4810 ext. 243.

June 27

Fueling the Boom: Chinese Woodcutters Chinese woodcutters in the Great Basin 1870-1920

5:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 13

Perspectives from a Historical Archeologist
by Emily Dale, Ph.D.

While the Chinese left behind few written records of their own, they are recorded in the historical documents of others, as well as in the artifacts and sites they left behind. In this talk, Emily Dale will discuss how historical records, archaeological data, descendant communities, and public archaeology painted a portrait of the lives and choices of the Chinese men who used the material culture curated in this exhibit.

Emily DaleEmily Dale, Ph.D. is a Lecturer at Northern Arizona University, specializing in the Historical Archaeology of the 19th-and 20thcentury American West. Her research focuses on immigration, culture contact, and ethnic and racial discrimination. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Reno in 2016. As cocurator of the Fueling the Boom exhibit, she drew heavily on her dissertation “Chinese Agency in the Era of the Chinese Question: Historical Archaeology of Woodcutting Communities in Nevada, 1861-1920.”

New State Museum Exhibit: ‘The Transcontinental Railroad: What a Difference it Made’

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V&T Coach 17

V&T Coach 17

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in the spring of 1869 changed America forever, dramatically reducing the time and cost for people and goods to move across country and accelerating the western expansion of the industrial revolution.

This spring, the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City will unveil a major new exhibit: “The Transcontinental Railroad: What a Difference it Made”. The centerpiece of the new exhibit is the only railroad car still in existence that was at Promontory the day the railroads came together – a milestone day in the history of the country. Continue reading →

Aurora/Bodie Chinese Woodcutters Exhibit at Nevada State Museum Carson City

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Chinese woodcutters

This 1908 photograph by J. Holman Buck shows wood being hauled by a team of burros in Bodie, California in 1908. [Photo courtesy of Nevada Historical Society]

In their heydays in the boom-and-bust mining culture of the late 1800s, the mining camps of Aurora, Nevada and nearby Bodie, California had a combined population of nearly 20,000.

Keeping the thriving camps supplied was an ongoing challenge.

A little-known piece of history of the two boomtowns – the role of the Chinese woodcutters who supplied firewood and charcoal to the camps – is the subject of a major new exhibit at the Nevada State Museum. Continue reading →