Camp Nye 1864-1865

During the Civil War, Carson City raised troops of its own. Camp Nye, named for territorial Governor James Nye, was established here in 1864 and 1865 as a mustering and training ground for Nevada volunteers—soldiers who guarded the overland mail and telegraph routes and the emigrant trails against raids while the regular army was consumed by the war in the East. Nevada had just become a state, its silver counted as vital to the Union cause, and this camp was its small military contribution. The site is marked in Carson City, the camp itself long since vanished.

What the plaque says

Established one-half mile to the north in October 1864, Camp Nye served as the home base for the men of companies “D” and “E,” 1st Nevada Volunteer Cavalry. During the Civil War, troopers from Camp Nye took an active role in struggles with American Indians, and Company “D” suffered the only two combat deaths incurred by Nevada units during the war in a battle at Table Mountain in the Tuscarora Range in Elko County on May 20, 1865. Camp Nye was deactivated in August 1865. Time has obliterated all vestiges of the barracks, stables and other facilities.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — 1.5 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 3.7 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 5.8 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Sand Harbor — 7.7 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• The Governor’s Mansion — 1.2 mi
• Bliss Mansion — 1.2 mi
• Stewart – Nye Residence — 1.3 mi
• Methodist Church of Carson City — 1.3 mi