Places

James G. Swinnerton

Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada

James G. Swinnerton is not remembered strictly as a Nevada artist. However, mention the name "Jimmy" Swinnerton, and his popular cartoon series "Little Jimmy" in the Hearst newspapers might come to mind. Swinnerton's poor health was a major reason for his sketching and... more

Hans Meyer-Kassel

Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada

Hans Meyer-Kassel, a classically trained artist from Germany, arrived in Nevada in 1937. From his studios in Reno, Carson City, and finally, Genoa, flowed a steady stream of landscapes, still lifes, nautical scenes, and the paintings for which he was most noted–portraits. He received... more

Gus Bundy

Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Washoe County, Washoe Valley, Northern Nevada

Gus Bundy settled in Nevada in 1941 after spending his youth in New York City; during his twenties Bundy traveled widely, both as a seaman aboard a U.S. Navy vessel, and as an art and curio collector in Japan in the late 1930s. Professionally, Bundy was a photographer as well as an accomplished... more

George Otis

Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada

George D. Otis was a widely traveled artist whose time in Nevada was intermittent. In addition to two periods in the 1930s during which he painted landscapes throughout Northern Nevada, Otis is remembered for his naturalistic paintings in dioramas at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City.... more

Ecological Islands

In the White River Valley of eastern Nevada, chalky white mounds rise gently above the sagebrush and greasewood of the valley floor. These mounds [Figure 1] are made of calcium minerals that precipitated out of the waters of old springs. Today, the spring mounds are the habitat of an unusual set of... more

Donner Party Survivor Dies

[This is a transcription of a newspaper article from The San Francisco Call, Wednesday, May 18, 1904.  For a larger image of the newspaper page, please visit the Library of Congress, Chronicling America project.]Donner Party Survivor Dies.SANTA ROSA, May 17.—Robert Crooks, a negro, who... more

Cyrinus B. McClellan

Places: Carson City, Virginia City, Reno, Storey County, Washoe County, Northern Nevada

Cyrinus B. McClellan settled in Virginia City at the height of the Comstock mining era. A versatile artist from Northern California, McClellan established himself as a portrait painter. He moved his studio between the Comstock, Carson City, and Reno, all the while serving his clients with... more

Craig Sheppard

Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada

Craig Sheppard, a native of Lawton, Oklahoma, lived in two worlds during his college years. He was a rodeo bareback rider in arenas from Oklahoma to New York's Madison Square Garden, and an outstanding graduate student in art at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He arrived in Reno, Nevada... more

Cliff Segerblom

Cliff Segerblom divided his creative energies between photography and painting. In 1938, he accepted a position with the Bureau of Reclamation and became the first official photographer of the Boulder Canyon Project. His pictures were featured in Life, Time, National Geographic, and one of his... more

Ben Cunningham

Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada

Ben Cunningham (1904-1975) arrived in San Francisco in 1925 and worked for the Federal Arts Project as a muralist. He developed a significant reputation on the East Coast with his hard-edge geometric paintings during the 1940s and 50s. The artist spent his formative years in Reno, and upon his... more

Gilbert Natches

Gilbert Natches was a Native American artist whose panoramic oil paintings of the Pyramid Lake region were realized with a limited palette and uncomplicated compositions. A nephew of Sarah Winnemucca, Natches gained recognition in 1914 by editing Northern Paiute texts for the noted anthropologist,... more

Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

Places: Clark County, Southern Nevada

Frederick S. Dellenbaugh established his artistic reputation in Nevada with one painting. "Las Vegas Ranch," executed in 1876, was painted as the artist was resting on his way to a mining camp in Southern California. It has the distinction of being the first known painting of the Las... more

Frederick DeLongchamps

Frederick DeLongchamps—also spelled Fredric DeLongchamps—was one of Nevada's most prolific architects. Born in Reno in 1882, he learned the building trades from his French Canadian father, a carpenter. Eventually, young Frederick studied mining at the University of Nevada. His... more

Fred Maxwell

Fred Maxwell was born in Denmark and spent part of his youth in the care of an English sea captain and his wife–sailing around the world, eventually becoming a merchant seaman. Maxwell arrived in San Francisco in 1890 and traveled over the west, prospecting and painting landscapes. He settled... more

Felice Cohn

Places: Carson City, Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada

This entry was provided through a partnership with the Nevada Women's History Project.Felice Cohn was an attorney, suffragist, specialist in land use policy, and the first Nevada-born woman to practice law in the state. She was born in Carson City in 1878 to prominent businessman Morris Cohn... more

Unitarian Universalism

IntroductionBy John MarschallIn nineteenth century America, the Unitarians and their close spiritual siblings, the Universalists, were outspoken leaders on such social issues as working to end slavery and to extend political and civil rights to women and people of color, promoting education, and... more

Underground Nuclear Testing at the Nevada Test Site

Places: Nye County, Southern Nevada

One hundred above-ground nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) between January 27, 1951, and July 17, 1962. On August 5, 1963, the Soviet Union and the United States signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), which prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, under water, and in... more

U.S. Ambassadors from Nevada

Several Nevadans have served as United States diplomats. The earliest were known as ministers, a term that was confusing since it also applied to cabinet members in some nations and to diplomats of the second rank. It has given way to the now better-known term of ambassador.Henry Worthington,... more

U.S. Geological and Geographical Surveys of the American West: The Great Surveys

Between 1860 and 1879 four major expeditions sponsored by the U.S government surveyed, mapped, and explored a large geographical region west of the Mississippi River.The maps and reports were submitted from the U.S. Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel, led by Clarence King; the U.S.... more

Tybo

Places: Nye County, Southern Nevada

Dr. Galley and M. V. Gillett discovered rich silver-lead ore in the Hot Creek Range of Nye County in 1870, but Tybo did not develop until 1874. By 1876, the population was more than one thousand. A series of fifteen charcoal kilns were built in nearby canyons to help in the smelting process. Mining... more

Twentieth-Century Nevada Drama

Like other aspects of Nevada's social and cultural life, professional theater suffered from the decline in the state's economy that spanned the turn of the twentieth century. By the 1930s, the economy had begun to recover somewhat, due in part to legalized gambling, the end of Prohibition,... more

Tuscarora

Places: Elko County, Northern Nevada

As prospectors dispersed from Austin, several of them discovered rich placer sands located in what is now Elko County. It was in 1867, shortly after the Civil War, and one of the miners called the place Tuscarora to honor a Union gunboat on which he had served. Area underground deposits attracted... more

Tule Springs Archaeology and Paleontology

Possible evidence for the association of early people and extinct late Ice Age animals resulted in two investigations at Tule Springs in Southern Nevada. The first was undertaken intermittently between 1933 and 1956 by Mark Raymond Harrington and Ruth DeEtte Simpson of the Southwest Museum, Los... more

Tule

Tule is a common name applied to various species of marshland grasses and reeds. Of these, the most common is the Common Tule (Schoenoplectus acutus). The term “tule” applies to species such as the common cattail, bulrushes and other similar grassy plants. As a group, tules were... more

Tropicana

Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada

The Tropicana Hotel, known for its famous showgirls and past associations with organized crime figures, was the most opulent of the hotel-casinos built during the resort-building boom on the Las Vegas Strip during the dozen years following World War II.Its founder was Ben Jaffe, partner and... more

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