Austin

A teamster named William Talcott kicked over the rock that started it. Hauling wood out of Pony Canyon in May 1862, he struck silver and set off the "rush to Reese River" — and Austin, climbing the canyon wall above the older camp of Clifton, became the county seat within a year and a city of ten thousand before the decade was out. What makes Austin matter is what left it: prospectors trained here fanned out to open Eureka, the White Pine camps, and a dozen others. The mother of Nevada's mining towns still holds a few hundred people.

What the plaque says

Austin, mother town of mining camps, sprang into being after William Talcott discovered silver at this spot on May 2, 1862. Talcott came from Jacobsville, a stage stop six miles to the west on the Reese River, the first Lander County seat. He was hauling wood out of Pony Canyon, directly below, when he made the strike that set off the famous "rush to Reese." A town called Clifton flourished briefly in Pony Canyon, but fast-growing Austin soon took over and became the county seat in 1863. Before the mines began to fail in the 1880's Austin was a substantial city of 10,000 people. From Austin, prospectors fanned out to open many other important mining camps. Nevada Centennial Marker No. 8 Nevada State Park System

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Austin — 0.7 mi
  A silver boomtown that hit ten thousand and fell to under two hundred — the living ghost town at the high middle of US-50
• Hickison Petroglyphs — 23 mi
  Western Shoshone rock art cut into soft white tuff at a 6,500-foot summit — the easiest rock art to meet on the loneliest road

More markers nearby

• Stokes Castle — 0.3 mi
• International Hotel — 0.5 mi
• Austin Churches — 0.7 mi
• Reuel Colt Gridley “Citizen Extraordinaire” — 1.1 mi