Governor Emmet Derby Boyle

Emmet Boyle was the first Nevada-born governor, and a thoroughly modern one. A trained metallurgist and engineer educated at the state university, he won the governorship in 1915 and served through the First World War, bringing a technician's mind to a state still run on mining-camp habits. In 1919 he flew home with the first airplanes ever to cross the Sierra into Nevada, becoming the first civilian to make the passage by air—fitting for a governor who believed in the new century's machines. The marker honors a native son who governed Nevada as it moved toward modern statehood.

What the plaque says

Eight grave sites to the north rests Emmet Derby Boyle (1879-1926), the first native-born governor of Nevada, serving from 1915-1923. Born in Goldhill, Boyle was also the first graduate of the University of Nevada to become governor. At thirty-five, he was the youngest person to hold the state’s highest office. Governor Emmet Boyle worked on Nevada’s water laws and introduced the state’s first executive budget. A strong supporter of women’s rights, Boyle called the Nevada Legislature into special session in 1920 to ratify the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote. Emmet Boyle died on January 3, 1926 and is buried next to his wife Vida McClure Boyle who he married in 1903.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Reno — 1.7 mi
  The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World
• Virginia City — 18 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
• Chollar Mine — 19 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
• Sand Harbor — 23 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

• Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery — 1.5 mi
• Lake Mansion Home of Myron C. Lake Founder of Reno 1877 — 1.6 mi
• Reno — 1.7 mi
• Frederik Joseph DeLongchamps — 1.7 mi