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.
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Related people
- · Emma Nevada
- · Reverend Blackiston
- · Father Monteverde
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Austin
Lander County, NV
Austin sprang to life after William Talcott struck silver here on May 2, 1862, while hauling wood out of Pony Canyon below — a find that set off the famous "Rush to Reese." The nearby camp of Clifton flared briefly, but fast-growing Austin overtook it and became the Lander County seat in 1863, swelling into a substantial city of several thousand before its mines began to fail in the 1880s. From this high Great Basin outpost, prospectors fanned out to open many other important mining camps across central Nevada.
The Surveyors
Lander County, NV
After the nation's domain reached the Pacific in 1848, the federal government mounted a series of surveys to map railway routes, wagon roads, water transport, and military relationships across the new territories. Nevada figured in two notable efforts: Captain F.W. Lander's Honey Lake to Fort Kearny wagon road, completed in 1860, and Lieutenant Simpson's 1859 route from Camp Floyd to Genoa. Military engineers such as Stansbury, Marcy, Whipple, Beale, Simpson, and Lander lent their names to the landscape, Lander to a whole Nevada county.
Jacobsville
Lander County, NV
Founded on the banks of the Reese River in 1859 by George Washington Jacobs, Lander County's first sheriff, Jacobsville served as an Overland Stage and mail station and became a Pony Express stop in 1860. In its early-1860s prime it held some 400 people and claimed the first telegraph relay station, a post office, courthouse, three stores, and two hotels, and was the first seat of a Lander County that then sprawled across northeastern Nevada. The seat soon moved to booming Austin, and today only a few foundation stones remain.
New Pass Station
Churchill County, NV
When John Butterfield's Overland Mail & Stage Company began running the Central (Simpson) Route between Salt Lake City and Genoa in July 1861, this stone station—roofed with bundles of willow twigs—was a key stop for watering and changing teams. Because the hillside spring was too weak for both people and horses, a support ranch a mile west kept the station functioning. The transcontinental railroad soon doomed the stage line; Butterfield sold to Wells, Fargo in 1866, and Central Route operations ceased in 1869.