Lakeview
Carson City, Carson City, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Lakeview. As early as 1863, two hotels with appurtenant stables were located here. In 1872, one hotel became a station on the newly-completed Virginia & Truckee Railroad between Carson City and Reno.Crossing under the highway are three inverted siphon pipelines furnishing water from the Sierra Nevada watershed to Virginia and Carson Cities. Work was first undertaken in 1873 on the 76 mile box flume and pipeline system with the construction of a maintenance station here. The Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company’s historic water-gathering and transportation complex immediately became world famous.As early as 1881, Lakeview became a lumber storage area for timber cut in the Lake Tahoe Basin. In 1887, shipping activity was accelerated as lumber was fed to the yard by a V-flume originating above present Incline Village. From here timber products were shipped to the Comstock mines and other points via the V. & T.R.R cars. Activity ceased in 1896.
Erected by State Historical Preservation Officevictor O. Goodwin
The Story
By 1863 two hotels and their stables stood here, and in 1872 one became a station on the newly finished Virginia & Truckee Railroad between Carson City and Reno. Beneath the highway run three inverted-siphon pipelines of the Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company, whose 76-mile box-flume and pipeline system — begun in 1873 to carry Sierra water to the Comstock — became world-famous engineering. From 1881 Lakeview also served as a lumber storage yard, fed after 1887 by a V-flume and shipped by rail to the mines until activity ceased in 1896.
Why it matters
Lakeview knit together the three lifelines of the Comstock — railroads, water, and timber — in a single spot on the road between Carson City and Reno.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bliss Mansion
Carson City, NV
Built in 1879 by lumber and railroad magnate Duane L. Bliss, this was in its day the largest and most modern home in Nevada. Constructed entirely of clear lumber and square nails, it was the first house in the state fully piped for gas lighting. It stands as a monument to the fortunes made from the timber and transportation that fed the Comstock mining boom.
Gardner's Ranch
Carson City, NV
From 1870 to 1918 this site held the ornate two-story home of Matthew Culbertson Gardner, rancher and lumberman, headquarters of his 300-acre ranch in the meadows to the south. Alongside it stood the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company's great lumberyard, and through the 1870s and 1880s Gardner logged south of Lake Tahoe—building the only standard-gauge logging railroad in the Tahoe Basin. Gardner died in 1908, and fire consumed the house in 1918, leaving only old shade trees behind.
Historic Flume And Lumberyard
Carson City, NV
Half a mile south of here once sprawled the yard of the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company, the greatest of the Comstock timber operations working the Lake Tahoe Basin from 1870 to 1898. Rough lumber and cordwood arrived down a 12-mile V-flume from Spooner's Summit in the Sierra, filling a yard a mile long and half a mile wide. A spur of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad then carried the timber onward to feed the mines and mills of the Comstock.
Franktown
Washoe County, NV
Orson Hyde, a probate judge in Utah Territory, founded Franktown in the Washoe Valley in 1855, and after the Comstock silver strike of 1859 its sawmill and a sixty-stamp quartz mill became vital suppliers of timber and ore processing for the booming mines. Hundreds of workers labored at the mill amid a district of fertile farms. When a railroad linked Carson City directly to Virginia City in 1869, Franktown's milling business quickly lost its purpose and the once-prosperous town declined.