Black Springs Firehouse Joins Historic Register

After years of being left to the elements and the fine art of forgetting, the Black Springs Volunteer Firehouse has finally been handed a shiny gold star from the National Register of Historic Places. Now, instead of being just another neglected building in a community swallowed by warehouses, it can stand proudly as an officially neglected building with a plaque.

The old firehouse is no ordinary pile of bricks. Built-in 1970 by the Black Springs community—a tight-knit group of folks who, instead of waiting for the powers to toss them a few crumbs, rolled up their sleeves and did for themselves. It was the headquarters for Nevada’s first African American Fire Chief, William “Bill” Lobster, who, in a fairer world, would have been given the resources to fight fires instead of the privilege of improvising.

But make no mistake—Black Springs wasn’t just another name on a map. It was one of the few places in Nevada where Black families could buy property when Reno and Sparks were doing their best impression of a “No Vacancy” sign for anyone who wasn’t white.

In those days, Black Springs had no paved roads, running water, and no sewers—just a lot of grit and a shared determination to build something out of nothing. And build they did.

Of course, time marches on, and “progress” has a peculiar way of flattening history under the wheels of delivery trucks and bulldozers.

Black Springs is now a scenic view for Amazon warehouses. Reno even saw fit to rebrand it as “Grand View Terrace,” as nothing screams respect for history quite like replacing it with a name that sounds like a retirement home, and most newcomers have never heard of Black Springs.

Helen Townsell-Parker, whose family helped shape Black Springs, stumbled onto the past the way most history is uncovered—by accident. A pile of old documents in her grandparent’s shed told the real story, one of struggle and survival.

She’s been fighting ever since to make sure it isn’t erased. She even wrote a book, A Cry for Help, named after the letter her grandfather once read to the county commissioners, which got them to finally admit that, yes, running water was indeed a necessity.

And while the firehouse is now an official piece of history, the community center next door tells a different story. Once a gathering place for Black Springs residents, now it sits empty—because where people once walked in for free, they now need $500 and an hourly rate to unlock the door. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned paywall to keep a community out of reach.

So here we are, the Black Springs Firehouse preserved, and history has its footnote. But a plaque is not a neighborhood, nor is a museum a home. If history has taught us anything, while recognition is nice—keeping a community alive takes more than a firehouse closed for business.