Scott Schrantz's Blog

The Carson Valley Plaza, located on the hill as you're going out of town to the south, opened nearly three years ago with stores such as Best Buy, Borders Books, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Old Navy. When it opened there were still a few empty lots scattered around the parking lot, waiting to be built on, and they've slowly been filled in over the years. One of them got an In-N-Out Burger, and another one got a Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and Panda Express.

Now there are only two empty lots left, and just recently both of them had chain link fences and "No Trespassing" signs put up. Looks like they're finally getting ready to start building something on both sites. Hopefully it's not just more strip mall stores; there are already plenty of empty storefronts next door at the new Clear Creek Plaza.

Okay, everyone who knows that there is a cemetery located in Carson City's Fuji Park, raise your hands. One, two...that's not a lot of hands. I guess it makes sense that it isn't well known, for while Fuji Park's tree-lined paths are very popular with city residents, the cemetery is in an out-of-the-way location that hardly anyone goes to. I myself have lived in Carson City for 21 years, and I only found out about the cemetery last year when I read about it in a book. And I never went to visit it until this week, when I had to scour the park practically from one end to the other to find it.

The cemetery isn't very big. In fact, it only has two residents, both military veterans who spent their last days at the Ormsby County Poor Farm which used to sit on the banks of Clear Creek. The gravesite is very well maintained, with an iron fence, gleaming white headstones, and even flags and flowers planted in the ground. It is in the shade of a couple of trees, and a picnic table is nearby so you can sit and enjoy your lunch while you listen to the soothing whisper of Clear Creek.

The two headstones are marked with the names of the two men, but scant other information, including dates of death. I did find this page online, which gives short biographies of the two men.

John Thoroughman

Born in 1838 in Ohio, died on December 9, 1909.

James Johnson

Born in 1836 in Ohio, died on April 13, 1910.

If you want to visit the cemetery, you have to venture outside the green areas of Fuji Park and into the dirt of the Carson City Fairgrounds. At the back of the fairgrounds you'll find a small bridge that crosses Clear Creek. If you go over the bridge and turn to the right, you'll see the cemetery on the other side of a clearing. It's not marked with anything other than the headstones, no plaque describing who these men were or why they ended up buried here. Just a small fenced-in area with a flagpole, in the shadow of the new Wal*Mart. Just another forgotten piece of Carson City history.

It's so rare that anything happens with Jack's Bar, that I just had to post this picture. They've boarded up the windows, and painted the plywood and trim a pale green. Not too exciting, I know, but when literally nothing has happened here for years, you grab on to what you can.

Jack's Bar says it's been a saloon “Since 1859”, but really it only dates back to 1899. One day about six or seven years ago, the owner left for a month-long vacation, and never came back. The property was sold to the owners of the Ormsby House, and they've said they're not going to do anything with it until the Hotel/Casino project across the street is finished. Which means that many of us won't live long enough to see Jack's Bar renovated.

The building is made out of the same sandstone blocks as the Capitol and the Mint, but it's not in such good shape. There is an obvious tilt to the south wall, and the entryway hasn't been square for decades. The owners have tossed around the idea of demolition, but were met with resistance. So they've decided to just let the property rot for a few more years, maybe hoping it will fall down on its own.

Maybe one year Jack's Bar will rise again, but for now at least it has a fresh coat of paint.

We've got a new addition to the Northern Nevada blogosphere (and the Around Carson blogroll) - David from Fernley!

For those of you who don't keep an eye on the "Site Updates" section in the right sidebar, I added two more Then and Now articles to the site.

#15 is Minden's Railroad Avenue sometime before 1916, and #16 is the Ormsby County Poor Farm, where Fuji Park sits today.

I haven't been doing these Then and Now articles as often as I hoped I would. It's easy to take the pictures, but I always get bogged down writing the articles. I have this obsessive need to research and research and pack the article full of as much stuff as I can find about the subject of the picture. Which is great, and makes the kind of article that I enjoy reading, and gets more of Nevada' history online where it can be easily found. But it takes a lot of time. I've got to start doing some quick and dirty articles, where it doesn't take me half the day to put everything together.

New Then And Now:
#16 - Ormsby County Poor Farm

New Then And Now:
#15 - Railroad Avenue

I'm back in town, after nearly two weeks in Southern California. I came back to find just a ton of comment spam on the site, proving that even homegrown scripts aren't immune to the spammers. I changed the HTML field names on the comment form to random strings in an attempt to prevent some of the spam; hopefully the robots that are out there won't realize that a field named zm5732 is where the e-mail address is supposed to go. If that doesn't work, I'll have to start coding a blacklist, and battle these spammers in hand-to-hand combat.

Oh, the joys of DIY web development.

The new Western Nevada Supply Company building in south Carson is now fully enclosed with outside walls, windows, and a roof. Most of the work has now moved inside.

Extreme Makeover: Downtown Edition is a new website exclusively dedicated to all the renovations, remodeling, and condo conversions that are going on in downtown Reno. It really is a site that somebody needed to make, with so much stuff going on down there, so it's good to see it show up.

Most of the projects have their own page, with a description of how it's going to turn out, along with conceptual artwork of the finished project. There are even photos on there, including at least one of mine! (Of course I don't mind, I just wish there was a link back here)

A hit tip to Diane Cohn for this one.