Page 132 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

Nevada
Carson City, the capital city of Nevada
King St., 1880.
Founded Elevation Population
1858
4,802 ft (1,463 m) 62,580
For thousands of years before European Americans arrived, the area that is now Carson City was home to Native Americans. The last of these were the Washoe people. Carson
City is about 30 miles (50 km) south of Reno and began as a stopover for California bound emigrants. However, when the Comstock silver lode was discovered, the city boomed.
Carson City lies in Eagle valley. The first European Americans to visit Eagle Valley were John C. Fremont and his exploration party in January 1843. Fremont named the river flowing through the valley Carson River in honor of Christopher “Kit” Carson, the mountain man and scout he had hired for his expedition.
By 1851 the Eagle Station ranch (named after a bald eagle) had been settled beside the Carson River. It was a trading post and used as a stopover to re-provision by pioneers on the California Trail’s Carson Branch.
At this time it was part of the Utah Territory, and governed from Salt Lake City. Settlers in Eagle Valley did not like being under the control of Mormons and so they lobbied
for the creation of the Nevada territory. These settlers looked for a site for a capital city if they ever got their way and became a new territory. In 1858, Abraham Curry bought Eagle Station and renamed the settlement Carson City.
In 1859 gold and silver was were discovered on the nearby Comstock Lode. As a result, Carson City’s population began to grow with a mixture of merchants stores, banks, gambling houses, saloons and more. Curry built the Warm Springs Hotel near the center of town, and to help get Carson City ratified as the capital, he loaned the hotel to the new
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