James A. "Jim" Lawrence pursued careers in both commercial photography and advertising in San Francisco before settling in Nevada in 1949. Lawrence, primarily a watercolorist, and his wife, Gerri, also a painter, established their home/studios at Rock Creek Ranch outside of Gardnerville, Nevada, and were founding members of the East Fork Gallery in that community.  

The Italianate style drew its inspiration from informal Italian villas. It began in England as part of the Picturesque movement, which was a reaction to the formal classical ideals in art and architecture. In America, the style was popularized by architectural pattern books.

Journalist-anarchist Hunter Stockton Thompson (a.k.a. Dr. Gonzo and Raoul Duke) came of age in the 1960s with New Journalism—a reporting style that, according to writer Tom Wolfe, uses scene by scene description, complete dialogue, third person point-of-view, and careful reporting of everyday gestures. Thompson's exaggeration of the style became known as Gonzo Journalism, epitomized by his classic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971).

While Lee Deffebach (1928-2005) is usually identified as a Utah artist, her ties to the former mining town, and now artist’s colony of Tuscarora, Nevada, some fifty miles northwest of Elko, were strong. Deffebach, a three-season resident of Salt Lake City, is considered by many Utah artists and critics to be the first significant female modern artist in the state. Her long time commitment to abstract painting is reflected in the energetic brushwork with which she delivered broad vibrant passages of color to her canvases.