Chinese in Nevada
Sparks, Washoe County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Chinese In Nevada. 1864-1964 This honors the heroism and hardihood of the thousands of Chinese Americans who played a major role in the history of Nevada. From across the Pacific, the Chinese came to California during the Gold Rush of ′49 and on to the mountains and deserts of this state where they built railroads, cut timber, and performed countless tasks. Sizable Chinese communities grew up in Virginia City and other towns. Their contribution to the progress of the state in its first century will be forever remembered by all Nevadans.
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
Erected to mark a century from 1864 to 1964, this marker honors the thousands of Chinese Americans who helped build Nevada. Drawn from across the Pacific to California's Gold Rush and onward into Nevada's mountains and deserts, they laid railroads, cut timber, and labored at countless tasks, forming sizable communities in Virginia City and other towns. Their contribution to the state's first century, the marker declares, will be forever remembered.
Why it matters
It recognizes the indispensable and long-overlooked role of Chinese immigrants in building the infrastructure of the American West.
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Related events
- · California Gold Rush
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Southern Pacific Railroad Yards
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Soon after 1900, crews reworked some 373 miles of the old Central Pacific line between Reno and Ogden, straightening the route and, in the process, bumping the division terminal off the main line at Wadsworth. In the summer of 1904 the railroad moved that terminal here, and the town of Sparks was born around its yards and a forty-stall roundhouse. The city owes its very existence to that relocation.
Sparks
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In 1904 the Southern Pacific Company, then straightening the old Central Pacific line across Nevada, moved its shops and headquarters here and laid out five blocks of employee housing, selling lots for a dollar to workers who had to build within 120 days. The railroad even sliced up its Wadsworth houses, shipped them free by rail, and relocated its whole workforce on July 4, 1904. Incorporated in 1905 and named for Governor John Sparks, the town boasted one of the world's largest roundhouses and served as base for the mighty cab-forward "Mallet" locomotives that hauled trains over the Sierra Nevada.
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The Virginia & Truckee Railroad, built between 1868 and 1872, linked the booming mining and milling towns of the Comstock to the transcontinental line at Reno. Chinese laborers graded this section in the summer of 1871, and track gangs quickly pushed south, reaching Steamboat Springs that October. Superintendent Henry M. Yerington drove the last spike near Carson City on August 24, 1872; the line's last train passed here on May 31, 1950.
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Below Reno on the eastern flank of the Sierra, these steaming, hissing hot springs so resembled a distant paddle-wheeler that emigrants named them for a steamboat. Located by Felix Monet in 1860 and soon fitted with a hospital and bathhouses, Steamboat became a health resort whose curative reputation drew visitors including President Ulysses S. Grant in 1879. The Virginia & Truckee Railroad's arrival in 1871 briefly made it a transfer point for Comstock freight bound uphill to Virginia City, and the resort's heyday tracked the silver bonanza of the 1870s before mining's collapse dimmed its fortunes.