Stonehouse
Humboldt County, Humboldt County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Stonehouse. Native Americans and passing emigrants once camped here and the stone house was erected in the 1860s by officials of the Overland Stage Company as a dining and overnight rest stop. The Central Pacific Railroad line passed through this section of Humboldt County in 1868, and the nearby springs provided water for engines. A small community flourished here for a number of years to serve the needs of railroaders and neighboring ranchers, and a post office operated here from November 1890 to March 1915.
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
Long before the railroad, this spot on the Humboldt corridor was a natural camping place for Native people and for emigrants pushing west. In the 1860s the Overland Stage Company raised a stone house here as a dining and overnight stop, and when the Central Pacific pushed through in 1868 the nearby springs watered its locomotives. A little trackside settlement grew up to serve railroaders and ranchers, complete with a post office that ran from 1890 until 1915 before the place faded away.
Why it matters
It captures in one location the layered story of how the West was crossed—Indian trail, stage road, and transcontinental railroad—and the fragile boomtowns that rose and vanished along the line.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Overland Stage route
- · Central Pacific Railroad construction
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Golconda
Humboldt County, NV
Golconda began as a Utah Territory mining town and a welcome landmark on the California Emigrant Trail, best known for the hot springs that fed a swanky resort hotel staffed by doctors. Its fortunes rose with the rails: in 1868 it became an ore-shipping point on the new Central Pacific, and renewed mining in 1897 prompted a short narrow-gauge line running south to the Adelaide mine. The town swelled to some five hundred residents by 1899, only to slump the following year when the mine and mill closed and rail service to the mine ended.
Battle Mountain
Lander County, NV
Battle Mountain took its name from a nearby range where California emigrants were said to have been ambushed in the 1850s, but the town itself sprang up in January 1870 after the railroad shifted its station here from Argenta and renamed the Reese River siding. Stage and freight roads teemed with mud wagons and heavy freighters bound for the mining camps to the south, and from 1880 to 1938 the town served as headquarters for the Central Nevada Railway. A copper boom arrived in 1897, and the growing town finally won the county seat from Austin in 1979.
Humboldt River
Humboldt County, NV
Fur trapper Peter Skene Ogden reached this river on November 9, 1828, during his fifth Snake Country expedition, exploring hundreds of square miles of its course and drafting the first map of the region. Unsure where it led, he called it the "Unknown River," later renaming it Paul's, Swampy, and finally Mary's River before it became known as the Humboldt. As the only natural artery across the Great Basin, the river funneled thousands of emigrants toward the Pacific between 1841 and 1870.
The Cattle Industry
Eureka County, NV
Nevada's broad valleys have supported cattle since the 1850s, and by the 1870s stockmen ranged herds across the northern part of the state. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 was the spark that made ranching pay: Texas longhorns were driven to Nevada's grasslands to fatten, then shipped by rail to markets as far as Omaha and San Francisco. As the mining booms cooled, it was these ranching empires that kept the state's economy alive.