Extras

Alicia Barber, Ph.D., is an award-winning writer, historian, and consultant. She is the author of “Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City.”

After looking for regular employment without much success, Al decided to strike out on his own as a self-employed prospector. Ed and Louise Vigus at the hardware store agreed to stake him with a pick and shovel, and for the most part he subsisted on a diet of spaghetti and beans while peddling his nuggets and rocks passersby from a humble roadside shop.

Four baskets woven by legendary Washoe weaver Dat So La Lee were stolen from the Nevada Historical Society in 1978. The tale of their return reads like a Hollywood plot.

One of the West's last stagecoach robberies reads like a good heist novel: the criminal duo, the masked hold up, a posse, good old-fashioned police work, and swift justice. However, this 1907 robbery ends on a mysterious note.

Everyone knows about the popular carnival ride, but did you know it was inspired by a water wheel on Nevada’s Carson River?

When a sudden cloudburst bursts over the small towns of Seven Troughs and Mazuma, residents had only seconds to evacuate out of the raging torrent. After the flood waters rushed through the canyon, a town was completely destroyed.

During the economic depression in the 1890s, members of the Mormon church acquired a group of mining claims in Nye County. While these claims had promise, would they be the answer to the church’s financial losses?

After hitchhiking cross-country from my family's home in New Rochelle, New York, I landed in Salt Lake City looking for a job—any job a husky kid could get. The "men wanted" newspaper ads called for muckers in a Nevada mine. I walked to the hiring office of Combined Metals near my hotel. It was the first of May 1946. I was still a teenager, not long out of Kiski Prep near Pittsburgh.