Nevada’s “Biggest Little City in the World” is celebrating the sesquicentennial anniversary of its founding 150 years ago. It was on May 9, 1868, that Reno’s first town lots were sold at auction, with some of the nicer parcels going for $1,000.
One of Nevada’s most prominent early citizens was Myron Charles Lake, today considered the principal founding father of Reno.
Residents first learned that the name “Reno” had replaced the original “Lake’s Crossing” after reading about it in the April 23, 1868, issue of Stars and Stripes, a military publication. With the devastating American Civil War still fresh in everyone’s mind, Nevada was proud to have this new city bear the name of General Jesse Lee Reno, a Civil War hero who died fighting for the Union in 1862.
For thousands of years, various tribes of Paiute, Shoshone and Washoe Indians inhabited the Tahoe Basin and the Truckee Meadows (Reno area). The lower reaches of the Truckee River and the lands surrounding Pyramid Lake (terminus of the Truckee River) and Lake Winnemucca, now a dry lakebed, provided an abundance of protein-rich Lahontan cutthroat trout. Other sources of food included seeds and pine nuts, as well as rodents and small animals.
Mountain man Joseph Walker led a party of 60 California-bound trappers along the Humboldt River in 1833, becoming the first white people to pass through the region. American emigration along the Humboldt River route picked up steam in the early 1840s as the California Trail developed and most pioneers rested and grazed their cattle in what was called the Big Meadows along the Truckee River. Migration later exploded with the California Gold Rush in 1849.
The first permanent settlement along the Truckee River was established in 1852 when a Mormon pioneer named Jamison built a trading post and sold supplies to emigrants passing through. Jamison Station was just the first of several names that would become attached to this general location in the Truckee Meadows.
In 1860, Charles W. “Bill” Fuller built a crude bridge over the Truckee River (at the present-day site of the Virginia Street Bridge in Reno) and established Fuller’s Crossing. He charged a modest toll on stagecoaches, mule pack trains and commercial wagon freighters rushing to the newly discovered Comstock Lode. He also built a wayside inn for the accommodation and refreshment of travelers. Fuller’s station made for a shorter and easier route than the existing Stone & Gates’ bridge about 4 miles downriver, but bridge washouts, bankruptcy and competition from other more favored places to ford the river persuaded Fuller that there must be an easier way to make money.
One of Nevada’s most prominent early citizens was Myron Charles Lake, today considered the principal founding father of Reno. He was a successful businessman and one of the Silver State’s wealthiest citizens. Lake displayed vision and shrewd business acumen, but his actions frequently exploited and angered citizens of the city he established. He had few friends. Contemporaries of Lake said that he had created the town in order to bleed it. Others disparaged him as Reno’s first robber baron.
Lake knew Bill Fuller from Honey Lake Valley where they had both lived. On his arrival in the Truckee Meadows Lake, he purchased Fuller’s operation. He traded his small ranch back at Honey Lake for the toll bridge, inn and a few acres of land south of the Truckee River. Lake intended to expand the venture by adding a large hotel and other businesses near the bridge. His hostelry would later become the site of Reno’s famed Riverside Hotel on the Truckee River.
Lake was born in 1828 in New York state, the oldest of seven children. In 1839, his family moved to Illinois where Lake later joined the Illinois volunteer militia to serve as a private in the infantry during the Mexican-American War. In 1852, Lake found his way to remote Rabbit Creek (La Porte) where he mined surface diggings for five years. After a four-year stint farming at Honey Lake Valley in Lassen County, Lake moved to the Truckee Meadows in 1861 where he bought Fuller’s struggling business. Despite Fuller’s financial distress, Lake also demanded an additional $1,500 in cash to close the deal.
Lake was confident that his business would succeed, but his timing couldn’t have been worse. Severe floods during the winter of 1861-62 swept away everything near the river, including the toll bridge and its attendant buildings. But Lake wasn’t fazed. As long as the population and traffic continued to grow, his toll bridge would generate reliable income.
He was also well aware that within a decade the nation’s first transcontinental railroad would run its tracks through the Truckee Meadows and he felt confident that he could negotiate a sale with Central Pacific Railroad for the land he owned. In 1859, federal surveyors had concluded that any trans-Sierra railroad route should follow the course of the Truckee River through the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. That decision was destined to make Reno Nevada’s first major city.
While carpenters were building Lake a new bridge in the spring of 1862, he took the first step to eliminate competition and ensure all road traffic would use his Lake’s Crossing through the Truckee Meadows. He successfully petitioned Nevada’s Territorial legislature for a 10-year exclusive franchise to operate the toll bridge and a turnpike south toward Virginia City (today’s South Virginia Street) at that location. In addition, no one else within 1 mile up or down the river could replicate his operation.
Over the course of time, Lake acquired a large portion of the real estate in the rowdy riverside town and he also owned fertile farmland throughout the Truckee Meadows. After a fire burned down the inn, he had a large hotel built in just 90 days on the same site near his bridge and turnpike. He called it Lake House and it boasted the most opulent and comfortable accommodations in Reno. The new two-story hostelry was crowned with a 74-foot-by-20-foot ballroom atop the building.
Construction of the Lake House cost $23,000, but Lake could afford it. He was now charging a hefty $1 for each horse-drawn vehicle traveling the town’s main thoroughfare and across his bridge, along with various fees for pedestrians, stock animals and larger wagon teams. By the late 1860s his account books show that Lake was earning an average of $250 to $300 per day, with receipts sometimes totaling $2,500 a day. At the time Comstock miners, the highest paid in the world in their profession, earned $4 a day. Lake was pulling in more than $100,000 a year and reigned as the growing community’s landlord.
