Carson City

Carson City is a capital that existed on paper before it existed in fact. In 1858 Abe Curry, shut out of pricey Genoa land, bought Eagle Station in this valley and laid out a town—setting aside ten acres for a capitol before there was even a territory to need one. His gamble paid off: when Nevada Territory formed in 1861, Carson City was named its capital, and statehood in 1864 made it permanent. Curry built much of the early town from prison-quarried sandstone, then died nearly broke in 1873. The capital he willed into being still governs the state.

What the plaque says

In 1851, Frank and Warren L. Hall, George Follensbee, Joe and Frank Barnard and A.J. Rollins established one of the state’s oldest communities, Eagle Station, a trading post and ranch on the Carson Branch of the California Emigrant Trail. The station and surrounding valley took their name from an eagle skin stretched on the wall of the trading post. In 1858, Abraham Curry purchased much of the Eagle Ranch after finding that lots in Genoa were too expensive. Together with his friends, Jon Musser, Frank Proctor and Ben Green, Curry platted a town he called Carson City. Curry left a plaza in the center of the planned community for a capitol building should a territorial state seat of government eventually be located in his town. In March 1861, Congress created the Nevada Territory. Seven months later in November, Carson City became the capital of the territory due to the efforts of Curry and William M. Stewart, a prominent lawyer. When Nevada became a state three years later, Carson City was selected as the state capital, and by 1871, the present capitol building was completed in the plaza Curry had reserved for it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — steps away
  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 — 3.2 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 — 7.3 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 — 9.1 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

• Nevada’s Capital — steps away
• Rinckel Mansion — steps away
• State Printing Building — steps away
• Charles W. Friend House, Observatory & Weather Station — steps away