Virginia City’s beginning is described by a Dr. Pierson in a letter to the Carson Tribune, dated August 1879:

“I visited the spot known as Virginia and found not a house, but two tents in the ground. One was owned by John L. Blackburn who died by an assassin’s knife. I saw the first mine and formed an acquaintance with Mr. Comstock, the man whose man is perpetrated everywhere mines ar known throughout the world.”

Dr. Pierson continues:  “I also met old Virginia for whom the place is named. On that day in June (1859), the writer saw $1900.00 in black gold valued at $11.00 an ounce washed out of the surface ground at the Ophir.”

By the late 1860’s, Virginia City had more than 30,000 people. Not bad for a place that boasted only two-tents when it was first established.

Why the big turn around? It was a simple chance encounter that created the eventual rush from the California gold fields to the Comstock’s silver mines.

Most of the miners in the area were plagued by what was known as “that infernal blue stuff.” The soft, blue-tinted mud got in the way of their serious work — the mining of gold.

It was simply shoveled out-of-the-way and forgotten.

Then one afternoon a Carson rancher named W.P. Morrison, having heard of the strikes being made in Gold Canyon went to have a look for himself. There he found the unwanted mud and intrigued by it, collected some of it.

Months later, Morrison had the sample analyzed. He jus’ happened to have some of the stuff with him the day he rode into Grass Valley, California, where he decided to have it assayed.

The assayer, J.J. Ott took the sample and checked it for gold. It assayed out at $1600.00 and ounce — but he felt compelled to double-check his findings because of what else he’d found.

After the second assaying, he knew his first findings were correct. The “infernal blue stuff” yielded $4,971.00 a ton and it was simply being thrown away.

By the next morning the word had spread throughout Grass Valley and the rush east over the Sierra Nevada was on.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to have the thing – let alone have it in her bedroom. Bette’s father had forbidden it and now she was sitting on the couch listening to him lecture on the evils of the Ouija Board.

“But its jus’ harmless game board,” Bette protested.

Her father either didn’t hear her or he ignored her completely. Instead he continued his rant on the evils of the Ouija Board and how it was a vulgar item in the face of their Catholic religion.

As he did this, she sat on the couch watching the thing burn in the living room fireplace behind her father. As she watched, the smoke curled and rolled up the chimney flue.

She became transfixed on the gray clouds as they grew darker and darker, until they nearly blacked out the flames engulfing the board. Bette could smell the smoke – it seemed tainted – like a burning steak.

She found herself smiling as the smoke started bellowing outward, hanging low along the shag carpet. Bette was no longer listening to her father’s voice as it suddenly sounded miles away.

There was a sudden flash – followed by a long fall into darkness. It seemed like hours before she wakened to the unfamiliar sight of flashing red lights and the feel of the chill of evening air.

“I don’t know what happened,” Bette heard herself say to the fire investigator.

It was then she realized she was sitting outside on the curb as what was left her parent’s home crumbled into an ash heap.  She was confused but otherwise unharmed.

Beside her rested the Ouija Board – undamaged.

Beijing, China based Xinyuan Real Estate Co. Ltd. purchased a portfolio of 325 finished lots and 185 acres of raw land across northern Nevada for $7.4 million, according to Lou Berrego of West Haven Development Group.

The properties, which had been owned by Wells Fargo Bank, extend from Wingfield Springs to Washoe Valley to Gardnerville, Berrego says. The deal was closed in May 2012 and was the first U.S. market property purchase the company has ever made.

The company, along with Lou Berrego, looked at over 100 properties across the United States, including properties in Miami, Chicago, Orange County and New York. The first deal picked was the Reno area properties.

All that was missing was a passable road through the area, so Hanson ordered one to be cut. A survey was made of the coast from the Klamath to Crescent City as 1855 was nearing its end.  Building a road in rugged and steep terrain had its trouble, but not as many as the difficulties with Capt. Robert G. Buchanan and his hot temper.

Buchanan’s temper prompted the man first ordered to create the Agency, S.G. Whipple to ask that the company of soldiers still in his area not be subject to orders from Fort Humboldt.  Whipple asked that the men be permanently assigned to the Klamath Reservation.

However, when Henley brought up the subject with Brig. Gen. John E. Wool, the commander of the Department of the Pacific, he was told that the detachment was being recalled because they had no quarters on the reservation. This left Whipple with 5,000 Indians who has recently “been hostile.”

As the year 1855 came to a close, Whipple busied himself purchasing flour from a mill near Kepel, directing his agents to ready gardens for the Indians to use for potatoes and other plants.  They bought gardening tools for them, along with seeds and twine for fishing nets.

And as the nearby war on the Rogue River ended, Whipple asked them to move to Wilson Creek. He promised them the government would help them until land could be cultivated and food grown.

He also promised to reimburse them for their fisheries and 900 square miles of land with money paid to them in their currency, Ali-cachuck.  But Whipple resigned in 1856 and was replaced by Agent by James A. Patterson.

Patterson repudiated the agreement, whereby the Tolowa returned to their Rancherias on the Smith River and the coast north of Crescent City.  In October 1856, Lt. Hezekiah Garder of the 4th Infantry concentrated them on Smith Island, where he issued those rations and clothing at the government’s expense.

Patterson was found so drunk in Crescent City in January 1857,  that he slept in his clothes in the bar of a local hotel.  He continued drinking the next day and passed out in a local stable’s stall and an investigation of his conduct was called for.

When the charges were substantiated, he was ordered removed, and replaced by V.E. Geiger. However, Geiger declined the appointment, so Maj. H. P. Heintzelman was nominated as sub-agent and told to take charge of the Klamath River Reservation. 

Unlike his predecessor, Heintzelman was industrious and “God-fearing.” He prohibited liquor and gambling on the reservation, ordered his employees not to drink or co-habit with Indian women on pain of discharge. 

He too, would soon find himself being discharged.

The Glass Pool Inn was a two-story motel at the southernmost end of the Las Vegas Strip. It’s most striking feature was its kidney-shaped, 54,000-gallon above-ground swimming pool with seven portholes that allowed passers-by to see swimmers underwater.

About the only structure on the desert when it was built in 1952, the Glass Pool Inn was a like a “mirage” to travelers exhausted from the heat of the Nevada desert. It was originally named the Mirage Motel, but changed its name with the arrival of the Mirage Luxury Resort.

It closed in 2003 and was demolished in 2006, leaving only the Glass Pool Inn’s sign standing alone in an otherwise vacant lot. Now the Neon Museum of Las Vegas is searching for it after it disappeared in May.

The sign itself was a landmark for its size and unique design of two light-blue, pond-shaped facades with the motel name and an advertisement for its slot machines. The large sign was being kept on the motel property behind a locked fence before its disappearance.

Unlike many of older ‘cabinet signs,’ the Glass Pool Inn sign is made of a curvy metal which can be damaged easily. Officials says if a crane wasn’t used to move it — it would have needed to be cut apart.

Given the size of the sign and what its extraction would require, the sign may not have survived its removal from the lot. For now the sign is gone and its whereabouts remain unknown.

It was a night for which I couldn’t have been prouder. I witnessed my son, Kyle walk across the stage and receive his high school diploma.

It might seem like a simple piece of paper to some, by to Kyle, I sure it feels like the achievement of a life-time. That’s because of all the trouble had getting to that stage.

First, he had ear infections as a toddler that were so bad he developed a hearing problem. He was unable to hear certain sounds and this set him back when it came to talking.

Because of this he was held back in Kindergarten. It was a tough decision but one that was correct none the less.

Like most kids — Kyle struggled with the discipline of school. He also found himself bored with many of the subjects, preferring to ‘self-educate’ himself on that which interested him, such as art, science-fiction, the latin language and Greek and Roman mythology.

Kyle attended Christian schools until his senior year, when continuing with a private education became financially impossible to handle for his mother or myself. Excited by the prospect of going to public school, he enrolled at Galena High.

And despite repeated assurances and an eleven credit load that he would graduate on time in 2011 he came up short by half an elective-credit. It came down to the title of one class — “Christian Studies” verses “Religious Studies.”

So, set back once again, Kyle refused to surrender and go for his GED (though he seriously thought about it), and instead stepped up for one more semester of high school. In that semester he took art, photography, small-engine repair and welding.

The final day of the semester he was told by his art teacher he had failed her class because he had turned in incomplete paintings and drawings. Once again it look as if he’d have to complete yet another semester.

However, an artist since before Kindergarten, Kyle overwhelmed that teacher with work he’d completed over the years and she relinquished — but jus’ barely. She gave him a ‘D’ — which doesn’t look like much — but is a passing grade none-the-less.

Since then, Kyle’s been attending Truckee Meadows Community College and carrying a ‘B’ average. He has plans to attend the Art Institute of San Francisco — because it’ll offer him a foot into Pixar, Disney or one of those places that make animated films.

There are not enough words to express jus’ how proud I am of his success — not only for finishing school — but for his internal fortitude! Where others may have and some did fail to press on, he stayed the path and earned a bright future!

It’s more than either his mother or I could have asked for.

The first chief executive to visit Lake Tahoe was Ulysses S. Grant, in October 1879, two-years after leaving office. And contrary to popular belief, John Kennedy’s visits to Tahoe were before he was elected president in November 1960.

It’s rumored he visited the Cal-Neva, which was owned by Frank Sinatra at the time, for a tryst with Marilyn Monroe. However the only documented account of Kennedy visiting Lake Tahoe was as a Massachusetts U.S. Senator seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Besides Monroe was in Los Angeles, rehearsing for the movie “Let’s Make Love,” at the time.

Less than a year after Grant’s visit, the first sitting president to visit Tahoe as well as Nevada, was Rutherford B. Hayes. On September 7th, 1880, he arrived in Northern Nevada along with the First Lady, General William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Alexander Ramsey.

After a brief stop in Reno to make speech, Hayes and company were driven to Spooner Summit by legendary stagecoach driver Hank Monk. Once there, the group took the train to Glenbrook, then boarded the steamboat, “Meteor” for a trip across Lake Tahoe.

One-hundred-seventeen years would pass before another President would officially visit the lake.

President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore hosted the Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum at Incline Village in 1997. Clinton eventually signed an executive order on July 26th of that year, creating an agency charged with management of Federal projects within the Lake Tahoe Basin.

My wife and I were running a few errands in town before going out to lunch. We were heading north on Rock Blvd,  jus’ south of Prater Way in Sparks when I saw a black SUV fly through the intersection.

The next second – I saw what looked like pieces of paper come flying out of the open window behind the woman driver. The papers were released by a toddler – perhaps 3-years-old.

It took another second for it to dawn on me that those pieces of paper were actually legal tender. I shouted for the wife to stop the car and let me out so I could scoop up as much as possible.

Before I could get there, two then three other men were in the intersection grabbing up the cash. I joined in the free-for-all and managed to get a hold of several bills.

Turns out they were only one-dollar bills – hardly worth the effort. And it became obvious at that point that the SUV wasn’t going to come back and the money already grabbed up wasn’t going to be returned – so I handed mine to the nearest guy, who had also been collecting the dollars in the roadway.

In the end, I figure the woman driving the SUV didn’t realize her child was throwing her money out the window. I’m only surmising here, but I think she left her open purse next to the kid with the money in view and easily accessible.

Children being children, the toddler chucked the cash out the window, not knowing he or she was doing something Mom wouldn’t appreciate. I imagine Mom’s still trying to figure out what happened to all her one-dollar bills she was planning to use for laundry later that day.

Honestly — had those ones been hundreds – I’d have kept them. Is that bad of me or what?

The doorbell rang and I looked at the clock — 9:30.

“Who the hell’s coming to our front door at his time of night?” I asked myself, “Better no be a salesman or some shit like that.”

Peeking through the peephole and saw a man in uniform standing jus’ to the left of the door frame. Beyond him, parked in the street was a white and green cruiser from the Washoe County Sheriff’s office.

Quickly I though about what I might have done wrong to get in trouble with the law and concluded I’d done nothing. Then my thoughts raced to my son Kyle and whether he was okay or not.

Upon opening the door the deputy smiled and said, “You left the trunk open on your car.”

My racing heart slowed down as I looked out towards the drive way. The trunk of the car was open and I laughed, “Thank you.”

“No problem,” deputy responded as he walked back towards his cruiser.

Earlier in the day, Kay had gone to the store and she must have left it open after bringing in the groceries. I slammed it shut and waved at the deputy as he drove away.

Once back inside, I was met by Kay, who asked, “Did I hear the door-bell?”

“Yup,” I answered, adding, “It was the sheriff’s office.”

“What did they want?” she asked.

“They wanted me to close the trunk of your car,” I answered.

“Oh, my goodness,” she replied, “I forgot all about it.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” I returned.

Then Kay’s eyes grew wide, “And no blogging about this!”

“What? And let everyone know this isn’t the first time you’ve done this?” I countered.

“Yes, exactly,” she shot back.

“Would I do that?” I asked in a mischievous tone.

“Yeah!” she answered.

Kay knows me too well.

The Sierra County, California Sheriff’s Office has identified the remains of a woman found in the forest several years ago. Her skeletal remains were found in a heavily wooded area off State Route 89 that runs between Truckee and Calpine in 2003, in the central part of Sierra County.

Since then, authorities have been trying to figure out the identity of those remains.  Recently, they received word they belong to Charlene Rosser of Eureka, California.

Identification was made through DNA samples from her mother and father, which had been sent to the California Department of Justice’s DNA lab. Rosser’s mother notified the Eureka Police Department that her daughter was missing in October 1998 after having last been seen in April 1998.

Rosser, who was known to accept rides from truck drivers, was 29 when she was reported missing. Her death is now being investigated as a homicide.

If you have any information on this case, you’re being asked to call the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office at 1-888-274-3743.