A Historian Looks Back on Washoe Valley
New to Western Nevada or Washoe Valley? Here’s a brief history from talented writer and historian Peggy Trego. Her work deserves to live on.
How Wrong Can a Modern Air Passenger Be in Making A Guess About What Used To Be in Washoe Valley? by Peggy Trego, Nevada State Journal, January 10, 1952.
Not long ago, this writer was aboard an airliner bound for Reno from San Francisco, which dipped down from the Sierra over Carson city and flew north through Washoe Valley.
There was an intent couple in the seat just behind me, who remarked the scenic interests of the country below. Just past the north end of Washoe Lake, the woman remarked: “Bet nobody tried to live down there until a few years ago.” She was so wrong. Long before the first struggling days of the tough town by the Truckee known as Reno, Washoe Valley was a teeming strip of industry and commerce. When the woman made her remark, the airliner’s silver wing had just flicked over the bare patch that marks the site of Galena- a town that once led in the race for permanence and progress. The plane had already droned over four other long-gone towns: Mill City, Franktown, Ophir and Washoe City.
Early Days
To the east was a desolate ribbon of road that had once swarmed with traffic, and only a faintly visible patch of shallows indicated the expensive and impressive causeway
that had funneled that traffic across Washoe Lake. There was no smoke in the valley, which had once had its own industrial smog from the furnaces of eleven big quartz mills, and a dozen more sawmills. It was just a quiet stretch of land dotted with a few farms and bounded by forbidding hills. It had been quiet for a long time.
Even when Reno was a scant decade through its youth, the flush time of Washoe Valley were the stuff oldtimers talked about. Considering Reno’s own youth in 1877–78, the Nevada State Journal’s articles about the “early days” of 1859–60 seem a bit sardonic, but the Journal printed them straight. Reno of 1878 could already look down the valley at a lost era, monumented by the decaying remnants of five villages that had been proud enough to call themselves cities.
Some Grand Procession
“In those days Washoe City, Ophir and Franktown were large and flourishing…Washoe City was the county seat and contained quite a number of large and creditable buildings, both public and private; hundreds of workmen found employment at Ophir, and Franktown was quite a bustling place.” Thus began the Journal’s oldtimer story of 27, 1877. “The Ophir Grade, leading from the Comstock to the mills and works in Washoe Valley, was the most thronged thoroughfare in the country (Now known as “Jumbo Grade”-ed). The teams passing over the road were so numerous as to form almost a continuous line. A stranger standing in the town of Gold Hill and looking up the Ophir Grade where it wound round the points of the range of high hills lying to the westward, would have supposed that he saw some grand procession moving across the mountains, so numerous, so closely wedged together were the quartz and lumber teams.” In the 1860’s Washoe Valley was the milling district, and also the supply depot, for the Comstock. The vital artery from the Valley to Virginia City was the Ophir Grade- a splendid road which had partly superseded the earlier Washoe Grade over the same general route- and which had the big causeway at its western terminus.
Bullwhacker’s Era
This was the day of the bullwhacker, and the Journal’s article mentioned George W. Heppardy of Washoe City as the chief of them all. Galena’s ex-citizens might have taken exception to Heppardy; they always claimed that James Mathews could out-bullwhack anybody else. Mathews’s roaring conversations with the Deity when his team stuck in Galena Creek were recounted years later. The whole town turned out to hear him cuss, and he usually mounted a stump to give special dignity to the occasion. The teamsters’ business was a two-way affair; they brought ore from the Comstock to the mills in the valley, and they returned to Virginia City with timber and wood cut from the Sierra foothills (the Carson Range, mountains to the west of Washoe Valley-ed.)
On the way to and from Virginia City, they passed the toll-house where the Ophir Grade joined the old Washoe Grade- a junction called Jumbo in much later years. This was a center of uproar in the 1860’s, tolls clinking musically into the coffers of the road owner and other cash making rich the proprietor of the good-sized tavern nearby.
Cash and Smog
But in 1877, the Ophir Grade was already a deserted road, “It is one of the most lonely roads in all the country around about the Comstock,” said the Journal. “The ‘solitary horseman’ would create a sensation should he pass that way. The old toll house still stands, and a gray-headed hermit dwells there as Cerberus of the gate, but he may without inconvenience carry all the tolls he collected in a fortnight, whereas in the early days it is said that at the end of a single day a half-bushel measure would be filled and heaped with silver coin, not to speak of the gold taken in.” From the toll station, the Valley in the 1860’s appeared to be one long strip of industry. The great white-stone Ophir dominated the end of the causeway, and Dall’s Mill at Franktown sent forth columns of smoke from its “Barrel process” roasters. In and around Washoe City were eight more big quartz mills; the Atchison, the Manhattan, the New York, the North, the Buckeye, the Tomolee, the Napa and the Alfred. Still another, at the south end of the Valley, gave Mill City its name. The sawmills dotted the slopes on the west side of the Valley. The town swarmed over the flat, each one trying to out-do its neighbors in outward signs of prosperity, population and noise. Between Washoe City and Ophir was the magnificent Winters property, with it s private racetrack, immense barns and stables, and big frame house made doubly impressive by strange Gothic windows. Between Ophir and Franktown the mansion of Sandy and Eilley Bowers jutted up from its pools and fountains. Theirs came slightly later than the mills, but they were of the same period. It was an era of money and commerce for the Valley, and the merchandisers, the saloon-keepers and heads of hostelries waxed fat on the business that poured into their establishments.
Mysterious Change
Nothing seemed more promising than Washoe Valley in the 1860’s, but, as the Journal’s story of 1, 1878, put it, “In a few years a gradual and almost mysterious change came over Washoe county.” First, of all, the Central pacific Railroad was completed to the Truckee Meadows, and the town of Reno set up in 1868, “causing a great deal of business to concentrate at the north end of the county, on the Truckee River.” “Soon after this the V&T RR was completed from Virginia City to Carson, carrying ores to the Carson River mills and returning with wood, lumber and timbers from the Sierra in the vicinity of Carson. “These two great monopolies- the Union Mill and Mining Co. And the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Company, soon monopolized the leading industries which had hitherto given life and prosperity to Washoe county… The bulk of the trade and traffic which had been fostered and built up by the overshadowing mining interest of the Comstock was shifted into another channel and away from Washoe county.” In a scant few months, the valuation of taxable property in the Valley fell from $3,000,000 to just about half what it had been. “All of the quartz mills… were torn down and carried away (remains of the Ophir Mill can still be seen as a pile of white rocks east of the current I-80 near the north end of the valley-ed).” Reno, brash and promising, began to lure the people away from Galena, Washoe City, Ophir, Franktown and Mill city. There was a brief flourishing of the wood and ice-storage business in Washoe Valley when the V&T completed its Reno-Carson line, but even this was insufficient to revive five little cities.
Reno Condescends
Thus it was that Reno of 1877, having survived the loss of its own big freighting business when the V&T came to town, looked back on the remnants of Washoe Valley with something resembling condescension. “The old settlers,” concluded one of the Journal’s articles of that era, “must heave a sigh of regret when their thoughts go back to the good times that were seen in their valley in the early days.” Bowers Mansion, then owned by M. C. Lake of Reno, and the Winters Mansion were noted with a little pity: “They have become old landmarks.” In 1952, a scant 90 years after the Valley’s great prosperity, it is these old landmarks that attract the casual eye of tourists who drive all-too-fast between Reno and Carson city, From the air, nothing stands out except the farmlands.
The Grade Remains
Washoe City has only a couple of brick and stone building to mark its original site. Ophir has the crumbling remnants of the big mill. Franktown’s outlines are barely discernable. Galena is a stretch of healthy sagebrush with a few fire blackened bricks at the roots. Mill City has disappeared altogether. One thing remains almost intact: The Ophir Grade. It doesn’t end in a causeway any more, and the toll station has only the rotting boards of later building to show where it stood, but the old grade climbs and curves its old path over the ridge to Virginia City. The road would have meant less than nothing to that lady in the airliner the other day, but the ghost of a bullwhacker would still recognize it.
editors note: The story doesn’t stop there. The grand ranches, the royalty, designs on Washoe water, and the Reno divorce trade are just some of the stories to be told. Follow Western Nevada Memories as we add more stories.
