Dayton School House – 1865

Built in 1865, this is one of the oldest schoolhouses in Nevada, raised the year after the territory became a state. By then Dayton had grown past a mining camp into a settled town with hotels, stores, and families who wanted their children taught close to home. The single building served generations of Dayton students, a sign that the place meant to last after the placer gold ran thin. It still stands on the Old Town walking tour, a plain stone reminder of how early public schooling reached the Nevada frontier.

What the plaque says

In 1865 Lyon County built this imposing stone school building for the residents of Dayton, then the county seat. It is the second oldest schoolhouse in Nevada and is the oldest such structure to remain in its original location. The building served the community as a school until 1959 when it was closed. It later housed the Dayton Senior Citizens Center and became the home of the Dayton Historical Society Museum in 1991.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chollar Mine — 5.4 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Virginia City — 5.8 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand
• Carson City — 11 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 — 12 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

More markers nearby

• Courthouse Site 1865 – 1909 — steps away
• Camels in Dayton — steps away
• Nevada’s First Gold Discovery — steps away
• Hall’s Station — steps away