Austin's Historic Churches
Lander County, Lander County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Austin Churches St. Georges Episcopal Church, to the east, was consecrated in 1878. The Reverend Blackiston used an eloquent, enthusiastic Easter sermon in 1877 to secure pledges for church, retaining wall, pipe organ, and bell and for a twenty-dollar gold piece from every employee or a local mine. The organ was shipped around the Horn and hauled by wagon from San Francisco. St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, to the west, was built in 1866 of native brick and stone. Father Monteverde, the first pastor, conducted the first mass at midnight Christmas Eve, 1866. Admission of $1 per person was charged to limit the number of people attending. The Methodist Church, to the north, was built in 1666. A canny minister formed the Methodist Company, and sold stock as Far away as the East Coast to finance the building of the church. Lectures and entertainment were part of the church scene for benefit purposes. Emma Wixom attended Sunday school here. Later, as world-famous Emma Nevada, she brought her troupe to Austin and gave a benefit concert in the church.
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
The silver-mining boomtown of Austin raised three churches in quick succession during its heyday. St. Augustine's Catholic Church went up in native brick and stone in 1866, where Father Monteverde charged a dollar's admission to his first Christmas Eve mass to control the crowd; the Methodist church followed, financed by stock sold as far as the East Coast; and St. George's Episcopal Church was consecrated in 1878 after a rousing Easter sermon secured pledges, its organ shipped around Cape Horn. The young Emma Wixom attended Sunday school here before becoming the world-famous soprano Emma Nevada.
Why it matters
Austin's churches show how quickly mining wealth built the institutions of permanent community on the frontier, and how a boomtown could send a local girl onto the world's opera stages.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Austin was born of silver. When rich ore was struck in this rugged stretch of central Nevada in the 1860s, a town erupted almost overnight — the classic pattern of the mining frontier, where a lucky strike could conjure streets, businesses, and thousands of hopeful newcomers in a single season. Boomtowns like this rose fast and often faded just as quickly.
What set a town apart was whether it built anything meant to last. In its heyday Austin did, and the surest sign was that its people raised not one church but three in quick succession. Churches were more than places of worship on the frontier; they were declarations that a settlement intended to be a community, with families, permanence, and a civic life beyond the mine.
This was the Reconstruction and Gilded Age West — a time when mineral wealth was pouring into remote camps, and the money made underground was being turned, block by block, into the institutions of settled American life.
People & events
The three churches each came with a story that captures the town's boomtown spirit. St. Augustine's Catholic Church went up in native brick and stone, and its first pastor, Father Monteverde, celebrated the first mass at midnight on Christmas Eve — charging a dollar's admission, the marker tells us, precisely to keep the eager crowd within bounds. In a packed young mining town, demand for a seat at Christmas was a problem worth managing.
The Methodist congregation solved its money problem with frontier ingenuity: a resourceful minister formed a company and sold stock as far away as the East Coast to finance the building, and the church hosted lectures and entertainments to raise more. St. George's Episcopal Church, consecrated in 1878, owed its start to the Reverend Blackiston, whose stirring Easter sermon secured pledges for the church, a retaining wall, a bell, a pipe organ, and a twenty-dollar gold piece from every mine employee. That organ was shipped around Cape Horn and hauled by wagon from San Francisco — a small epic of effort for a single instrument.
And woven through it all is a local girl named Emma Wixom, who attended Sunday school in the Methodist church. She would grow up to become the world-famous soprano Emma Nevada, and later returned to Austin with her troupe to give a benefit concert in the very church where she had once been a child.
Its place in the American story
Austin's three churches show, in a single hilltop town, how quickly mining wealth was converted into the permanent institutions of American community. The frontier is often imagined as lawless and rootless, but here the money came out of the ground and went straight into brick, stone, bells, and a pipe organ carried halfway around the world. That impulse — to build lasting community as fast as fortune allowed — is a defining thread of the Western boom.
The churches also capture the improvised, entrepreneurial spirit of the era: selling church stock back East, charging admission to Christmas mass, wringing pledges from a mine's payroll. Faith and frontier capitalism worked hand in hand to raise these walls.
And in Emma Nevada, the story reaches beyond the mining district entirely. That a girl from a remote Nevada silver town could rise to sing on the world's great opera stages — and come home to give back — is a vivid piece of the American promise that talent could travel from anywhere to everywhere.
If you visit
Stand at this marker and orient yourself by the three directions it names — St. George's Episcopal to the east, St. Augustine's Catholic to the west, and the Methodist church to the north. Reading the town this way, church by church, is the best way to feel how much community a boomtown packed into a few short years.
Take in the setting: Austin sits high and remote in central Nevada's mining country, and the effort it took to build here — to haul an organ around Cape Horn and up from San Francisco by wagon — makes far more sense once you see how far this town is from anywhere. The distances are part of the story.
Let the human details travel with you: a midnight Christmas mass with a cover charge, stock sold across a continent to raise a roof, and a Sunday-school girl who became Emma Nevada and returned to sing for her hometown. Austin today is a quiet place, but with these stories in mind, its churches speak volumes about the ambition of a silver boom.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Emma Nevada
- · Reverend Blackiston
- · Father Monteverde
Themes & tags
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