Haunted Carson City

By Janet Jones

Journey through this Nevada town filled with nineteenth-century history—and hauntings. Includes photos!
 
The Kit Carson Trail in Carson City, Nevada, is haunted by history: The footsteps of Abe Curry, the first superintendent of the Nevada City Mint, still echo in the halls of the building. Mark Twain’s niece, Jennie Clemens, died of a fever when she was nine; her spirit peeks from the upstairs window of the family home and is said to visit the Lone Mountain Cemetery. In the 1800s, V&T Railroad baron Duane Bliss built his home on a burial ground. Today, the house occasionally chimes with laughter and music as spirits gather in the parlor in evening finery . . .
 
Take a walk through Carson City’s haunted history with author Janet Jones and meet the spirits that linger in the city's historic district.
 
“Explores 19 legends of haunting in Nevada’s capital city: Historic mansions; hotels; the Stewart Indian school; the Virginia and Truckee Railroad and more.” —Reno Gazette-Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614236801

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I moved to Carson City over thirty years ago. I did not come to Carson City with open arms. Growing up in California in a very green, lush area, the Nevada desert was very stark to me. However, I was lucky to make friends who introduced me to its beauty and amazing history. I have walked on the same ground that Black Bart used as his lookout while he was a fugitive of justice. That ground remains virtually unchanged from when he was there. This is not a rare occurence but rather the norm in Nevada. I have walked the desert, just a few feet from the main highway, to find artifacts from the wagon trains that came to Nevada that have been left untouched for hundreds of years. I’ve walked the sagebrush-covered hills to come across a miner’s camp from the 1860s, and it looks as if he just walked away yesterday. In Carson City, just a very short walking distance from the college, is a completely untouched Chinese camp from the 1860s. There are few places left in the United States where you can experience history in its raw form, as progress has cemented, paved and built over it. I feel very privileged to live in this beautiful state and still experience such a close relationship with its past.

Carson City has a large number of very famous and amazing visionaries who lived in a small area. These people not only helped form the capital and state of Nevada, but many also went on to influence the world with their writings, inventions and successful business ventures. To be able to meet some of their spirits that remain today is quite an incredible experience.

Carson City today lives in the future and the past. Modern state government, new technology and new visions are being enacted daily here. The future and the past are both embraced and walk side by side. It is not unusual to see a businessman walking down the street in a three-piece suit and, alongside him, a citizen dressed in period clothes from the time of Carson City’s beginnings.

I have worked with the Carson City Convention and Visitors Bureau for many years and have volunteered to be a guide and a presenter at various locations on the annual October Kit Carson Ghost Walk. One of the pleasures of my job is learning Carson City history, as it is a major tourist attraction. In researching the past, I came to realize early on that Carson City is proud of its history, and this is evident in the extensive written records that can be found. Its citizens have preserved letters, diaries and newspapers from before Carson City existed through today. I urge all of you to document your lives and what is going on socially, politically, et cetera, so that your future grandchildren and great-grandchildren can experience history on a more intimate level. History becomes more real when you learn it from someone who lived it rather than from one writer’s view. Because of this research and my interaction with the spirits of this city, it has given me a very personal experience, and history for me has become a living thing.

My job has also given me opportunities to access nearly all of the buildings in the historic area. I have been able to investigate or experience most of the spirits that are written about in these pages. This is not a book of legends but rather stories I believe to be true, as I have been able to confirm many of the ghost stories told over the years and share new ones.

During the years I have been experiencing and researching the spirits that reside in Carson City, I have learned one very important thing, and that is that 99 percent of the spirits you will encounter are people. I have learned to respect them and treat them as if they were still living in our dimension instead of their parallel universe. I hope when and if you encounter spirits in your life, whether it is in your hometown or during a visit to Carson City, that you will remember you are having an experience with someone who once lived and molded your life as it is today.

The majority of the stories in this book are based on homes and businesses along the Kit Carson Trail, a walking tour of Carson City’s historic district. The Convention and Visitors Bureau and the city of Carson developed this walking tour and maps noting most of the houses in this book. If you wish to take a walk through Carson City’s haunted history, I would recommend contacting the Convention and Visitors Bureau at www.visitcarsoncity.com, or come into the visitors center and pick up a copy of this map. I hope you will enjoy these stories of Carson City’s history and its lingering past citizens as much as I enjoy discovering more about them everyday.

CHAPTER 1

THERE’S A PARTY GOING ON!

BLISS MANSION

Not every couple has a venue as lovely as the Bliss House or gets the ghost of Mark Twain sharing a wedding toast.

—Cydne and Steve

As you walk through the historic district of Carson City, you may often wish these homes could tell their histories. During an evening walk past the Bliss Mansion, you just might glimpse history being relived by the past residents as if it was still 1879.

In 1859, Duane Bliss moved from San Francisco to Nevada to work as manager and partner of the private Gold Hill Bank of Alvin Paul. He was only twenty-six years old at the time. In 1864, the Bank of California (known today as Bank of America) took over the bank, and he continued working there as a cashier and made outside investments for the bank. In 1868 and 1869, he took part in forming the now world-famous Virginia and Truckee (V&T) Railroad, which began by running between Virginia City, Reno and Carson City. He later also helped organize the Carson and Colorado Railroad, which ran to southern Nevada. Bliss was influential in obtaining the right of ways for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad to Virginia City. He also persuaded many residents to help fund the project by promising them that hauling lumber from his Carson and Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company at Lake Tahoe over that railroad to Virginia City would more than repay them for their investment.

During the construction of the V&T Railroad, Bliss was sent to New York for business. Before he left, Bliss gave his stock in a Comstock mine, which was going up in value at a rate of about $100 a day, to one of his trusted business associates, Mr. Sharon, for safekeeping. The stipulation was that while Bliss was gone, if the stock in the mine went down, Mr. Sharon was to sell the stock. When Bliss returned, he found that Mr. Sharon did not sell the stock when it dropped, and Bliss lost everything, leaving him $300,000 in debt. Mr. Mills, another of Bliss’s business associates, offered to lend him this amount at 6 percent interest based only on Bliss’s work ethic and astute business sense, and between 1870 and 1871, Bliss paid back this loan. Mr. Mills then financed Bliss to purchase fifty thousand acres of timberland at Lake Tahoe for his Carson and Tahoe Timber and Fluming Company for the purpose of furnishing over three million feet of timber monthly for shoring up the mines and three thousand to four thousand cords to be used as fuel for the Cornish pumps.

Bliss realized early on that the new residents of Carson City had very little lumber to build with and thus were living and working in adobe structures or canvas tents. He knew that ample supplies of lumber were available at Lake Tahoe, just at the top of the mountain above the city. The challenge was getting the lumber from Lake Tahoe and down the mountain in an economical and efficient manner.

In 1871, Bliss invested in timberland at Lake Tahoe, and he soon became one of Nevada’s most successful businessmen based on the success of his lumber company. He then built a railroad to transport the lumber to the flumes that carried it down into Carson City and to the mines in Virginia City. This lumber was not only critical for Carson City, but also for the mines, which never would have been able to expand and produce the massive amounts of silver and gold they did. Without this lumber and its impact on mining in the Comstock, the country’s progress would have most definitely been slowed. The ore that came out of the Comstock built San Francisco into the great city that it is today and helped end the Civil War. I am sure Bliss had no idea of the impact his lumber company would have on our country’s history. To help communication between the lumber company and Carson City, he became the owner of one of the first telephones in the West when he put a wire between Glenbrook at Lake Tahoe and Carson City.

Bliss was strongly opposed to power companies from California coming in and taking Lake Tahoe’s water and thus ruining the lake’s esthetics. He fought this battle until the end of his life.

Bliss installed the first passenger train to Lake Tahoe, which was connected to the Southern Pacific Railroad at Truckee. He also built the Tahoe Tavern Casino and Railway Office as the train stop at the lake. Bliss then commissioned Mr. Eckart, the designer of the iron steamer Meteor in 1876, to design a much larger twin screw, steel steamer Tahoe on the same slender lines for speed that would hold up to two hundred passengers. Bliss had the Meteor and the Tahoe built in San Francisco and then shipped up in pieces to the lake. He later added the Nevada to the fleet, accompanied by pile drivers and barges. The Tahoe transported passengers from around the