Federal Government Building (1888-1970)

Carson City got its first federal building in 1890, and it announced the capital's permanence in stone. Designed by Mifflin Bell, a prominent federal architect responsible for post offices from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn, the Victorian building carried his signature flourish—an unusual three-faced clock set in a tower at one corner. It housed the post office and federal courts and offices for eighty years. The building still stands as a Carson City landmark, since renamed the Paul Laxalt Building for the Nevada governor and senator, its clock tower still marking the downtown skyline.

What the plaque says

This imposing public structure, the former United States Post Office and Courthouse, represents the first federal office building constructed in the State of Nevada. Construction began in late 1888 and was completed in 1891 at a cost of $138, 605.53. Designed by Mifflin E. Bell, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, the building incorporates many elements of the Romanesque Revival style. Subsequent interior designs were mad by Bell’s successors, Will Frost and James Windrum. Thomas P. Hawley was the first United States District Judge to preside in Carson City. The last federal judge was Bruce R. Thompson whose court was moved to Reno, August 1965. This building ceased to serve as a post office in 1970 with William E. Dunfield as Postmaster. Deeded to the State in 1971 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the Government Building continues to serve the public.

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 — 3.4 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 — 7.2 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 — 9.0 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 United States Mint Carson City, Nevada — steps away
• Carson City — steps away
• Nevada’s Capital — steps away
• Orion Clemens Home — steps away