Nevada’s Capital

Abe Curry left ten acres at the center of his new town for exactly this, and the building took shape between 1869 and 1871, a few years after statehood. Architect Joseph Gosling designed it of native sandstone quarried by convicts at the state prison, in a blend of Neoclassical and Italianate lines. Its dome was painted silver to honor the metal that built Nevada. For a century it held all three branches of government; the legislature moved to its own building in 1971, but the governor's office remains. The Capitol still anchors the plaza Curry set aside.

What the plaque says

Completed in 1871, Nevada’s splendid Victorian-era Capitol was built of sandstone from the quarry of the town’s founder, Abe Curry. The octagon annex was added in 1907, the north and south wings in 1915. Notable features are its Alaskan marble walls, French crystal windows, and elegant interior.

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

• Carson City — steps away
• State Printing Building — steps away
• Rinckel Mansion — steps away
• Charles W. Friend House, Observatory & Weather Station — steps away