Reuel Colt Gridley “Citizen Extraordinaire”
Lander County, Lander County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Reuel Colt Gridley “Citizen Extraordinaire”. This simple stone structure, opened to the public in late 1863, was originally operated as a general merchandise store by the firm of Gridley, Hobart, and Jacobs. Gridley is best remembered for his 1864 wager that prompted the auctioning of a sack of flour for donations to the “Sanitary Fund,” the Civil War forerunner of the American Red Cross. The flour was sold again and again throughout Nevada and California, then taken east and eventually auctioned at the St. Louis Sanitary Fair in 1864. In all, it raised about $275,000 for the fund. Gridley died almost penniless six years later.
Erected by Lander County Civic & Historic Society
The Story
This modest stone store, opened in 1863, became the launching point for one of the Civil War's most remarkable fundraising stunts. Merchant Reuel Colt Gridley lost an 1864 election wager and, honoring it, auctioned a sack of flour for the Sanitary Fund—the wartime forerunner of the American Red Cross. Resold again and again across Nevada, California, and finally at the St. Louis Sanitary Fair, the single sack raised roughly $275,000 for wounded Union soldiers, even as Gridley himself died nearly penniless six years later.
Why it matters
Gridley's flour sack shows how even remote mining towns far from the battle lines threw themselves into the Union war effort, funding soldier relief through frontier ingenuity and civic generosity.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1860s, the mountains of central Nevada were roaring with silver. The Reese River excitement had pulled miners, merchants, and speculators into the high desert of what became Lander County, and towns bloomed almost overnight around a single vein or a promising ledge. A general merchandise store like the sturdy little stone building described here was the beating heart of such a place — the spot where prospectors bought their beans, powder, and picks, and where news from the wider world arrived days late and heavily embroidered.
And the wider world was at war. Even as fortunes were being dug out of these hills, the Civil War was grinding through its bloodiest years back East. Nevada itself was on a fast track to statehood, admitted in 1864 in part because the Union prized its silver and its loyal votes. Out here, patriotism and commerce were tangled together: the same men weighing ore dust across a counter were following the fortunes of distant armies.
Into that setting stepped a merchant remembered on this marker as a "Citizen Extraordinaire" — a shopkeeper whose name would end up traveling far beyond the reach of any wagon road out of Lander County.
People & events
The story turns on a wager. In 1864, Reuel Colt Gridley made a bet — the kind of good-natured political gamble common in a rough mining town — and lost. Honoring it, he agreed to carry a sack of flour, and that simple sack became the engine of one of the war's most improbable fundraising campaigns.
Rather than simply hand over the flour, the town auctioned it, with the proceeds going to the Sanitary Fund — the relief effort that cared for sick and wounded Union soldiers, and a forerunner of the American Red Cross. The winning bidder, in a stroke of frontier generosity, donated the sack back so it could be sold again. And so it was: auctioned and re-auctioned across Nevada and California, each sale raising fresh money, the flour itself never consumed but endlessly recycled as a token of goodwill.
The sack's fame carried it east, all the way to the great St. Louis Sanitary Fair in 1864, where it was auctioned once more. By the time the traveling flour had finished its work, it had raised roughly $275,000 for soldier relief — an astonishing sum wrung from a single ordinary sack. The marker closes on a sober note: the man who set it all in motion died almost penniless six years later, his generosity outliving his own good fortune.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to imagine the Civil War as a strictly Eastern drama, fought along rivers and rail lines a continent away from the mining camps of the Great Basin. Gridley's flour sack is proof that the war reached everywhere. Communities with no battlefield within a thousand miles still found ways to put their shoulders to the Union cause.
The Sanitary Fund the sack supported was part of a broad civilian relief movement that helped care for soldiers when armies had little capacity to do so themselves — organizing supplies, nursing, and comfort for the wounded. That such an effort could be bankrolled, in part, by the repeated auction of one bag of flour in remote Western towns says something powerful about how total the mobilization was, and how ordinary people improvised to be part of it.
There is also a distinctly American flavor to the tale: a lost bet turned into a national good deed, humor and showmanship harnessed to a serious cause. Gridley's flour became a kind of touring celebrity, and its ending — a generous man dying poor — gives the story the bittersweet weight of a true one rather than a tall tale.
If you visit
Give the stone building itself a good long look. It is a plain, honest structure — exactly the sort of durable little general store that anchored a Western mining town — and knowing what began here transforms it. Picture the counter inside stacked with miners' supplies, and a single sack of flour on it that would soon travel farther and do more good than anyone in the room could have guessed.
Let the surrounding landscape fill in the rest. These are silver-country mountains, dry and steep, and the isolation is part of the point: the achievement was raising a small fortune for wounded soldiers from a place this far from the fighting. Stand in the quiet and imagine the noise of an auction, the same flour sack sold over and over to laughter and applause.
This makes a rewarding stop on a back-roads Nevada history drive, the kind of place where a modest building carries an outsized story. Take your time, read the marker slowly, and remember a merchant whose generosity cost him nearly everything and is honored here long after his fortune was gone.
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
- · Reuel Colt Gridley
Related events
- · Sanitary Fund flour sack auction
- · St. Louis Sanitary Fair, 1864
Themes & tags
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