(cheerful banjo music) - This time on Wild Nevada, we're gonna settle it once and for all, which is the oldest town in the state, Dayton or Genoa.

And the answer is- - No, we are not getting into that fight because we are gonna enjoy both places, they both have unique experiences that we can enjoy.

- All right, well that'll be fun too.

That's coming up right now on Wild Nevada.

- [Announcer] Support for PBS Reno and Wild Nevada comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer, (peaceful music) who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

- [Announcer] Travel Nevada helps provide travel inspiration and experiences for those interested in creating their own Wild Nevada adventures.

(inspirational music) For more information, visit travelnevada.com.

And by Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, Charles and Margaret Burback, (peaceful music) Sande Family Foundation, Kristine Perry, Thelma B and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, June S. Wisham Trust, the Hall Family, Dillard and Meg Myers, Sarah and Leonard Lafrance, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by individual members.

(cheerful music) - We're beginning this time in Dayton, which is just off of Highway 50 in northern Nevada, just a few miles east of Carson City.

- Now, Dayton claims to be the oldest settlement in the state of Nevada, (upbeat banjo music) but over on the other side of Carson City in Genoa, they claim that they are the oldest settlement.

- Now, this is a debate that's been going on for more than a century, and continues today.

- And we are not going to settle this debate, but we are going to take a look at a little bit of what each of these places has to offer.

- And we're gonna begin this trip with a visit to a Comstock ghost town that's making a bit of a comeback.

Just a few miles from the center of Dayton, you can find Sutro, a site that remains a popular spot for history lovers.

- [Dave] We meet Chris Pattison, who introduces us to a unique remnant of the Comstock mining days.

- All right guys, well, this is it, the Sutro Tunnel.

And it's not even a tunnel, it's an adit, a tunnel has two ends, you go in and out, right?

- Sure.

- An adit is for drainage.

The mines in Virginia City, they kept flooding, and they, at first, were using huge buckets to bring this water out of the mines as they were digging down, (calm music) then they transitioned into pumps.

Adolf Sutro saw this problem, he's like, well, why don't we just do what they do in Germany, in Prussia, where he's from, so he started this, really early 1860s with the idea, and then began October 19th, 1869 on this tunnel to drain the mines of Virginia City.

It would also ventilate the mines, it would be for safety access, so miners, if there was a fire, the miners had another way to escape out of the tunnel.

Ventilation, water, escape, and transportation of ore. - [Dave] Why do they need to drain the water?

Well see, say you're wanting to dig a footing, right?

And you dig that footing, but you're at ground level with the water, and you keep digging, and you're hitting water, hitting water, you can't make any ground.

So, you have to pump that water out so you can dig your hole, well instead of having to pump that water out and burn just thousands of cords of wood to run those machines, those pumps, just let it drain naturally.

We're at about 1600 feet below Virginia City right now, and it goes almost perfectly straight for almost four miles to underneath the Virginia City.

- What I'm hearing is this flowing water coming out of this tunnel, and it is not a trickle, it's a pretty good flow, that surprises me.

- Well, this water is going to continue to run indefinitely.

Right now the water runs under our feet where we're standing here, and goes over to the Sutro Pond.

In the Mountain Davidson, it's an aquifer, a naturally occurring aquifer that's geothermal.

This water's hot.

When it first came out in 1879, Adolf Sutro released the gates, let the water flow out, and it says in the book, (calm music continues) "And he was engulfed in a huge cloud of steam, and he measured the water temperature, and it was at 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

That water back there is at 120, 140 plus, it's all geothermal, and it's gonna continue draining forever.

- So he could have, instead of the Sutro Tunnel, could have created the Sutro Hot Spring.

- He could have.

- And made a big pool.

We could be soaking in it right now.

- Maybe one day we can have that as a fun attraction, but not yet.

- The facade at the entrance has gone through a lot of change over the years.

At first, it was just a hole in the ground, but Theodore Sutro, Adolf's brother, built a facade in a Greek style, and later changed it to the Spanish style you see today.

- So what was the point of a facade on a tunnel like this?

It was a sales pitch.

That's really what it is.

(Chris Orr chuckles) So most of your drainage adits, your tunnels, you just see a hole in the ground, right?

- Right, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, Theodore Sutro was wanting to sell this project, he didn't sell it until after his brother, Adolf Sutro, who made everything, after he passed away.

Then Theodore Sutro sells it.

- It's Curb appeal.

- Curb appeal.

- Got it.

I watched a few DIY shows, I know how you make your house look nice for people who wanna buy it, that makes sense.

- [Chris O] So what does the 1888 stand for on the top?

- [Chris P] So, 1888 is the year that this facade was built.

October 19th, 1869, Adolf Sutro did the first pick strike.

Then 1879 is when he finally released the gates.

So it took him 10 years to build this tunnel.

- [Chris O] Seems like that kind of determination deserves some respect, and the friends of the Sutro Tunnel are providing it.

- [Dave] They're making a big effort to restore this area, and that includes the inside of the tunnel.

- There's four miles of timbers that are collapsed and rotting in that tunnel.

- [Chris O] That's amazing to think.

- [Chris P] There was a huge collapse right in the front here.

(sober music) The people couldn't fit in, it wasn't safe, the air wasn't safe, we just didn't know what was back there, so we wanted to send in a drone to see what would happen.

These drones aren't your standard Amazon drones that work off a GPS, these are underground specialty drones.

We sent that drone in, and it tested the air quality, we found out that's safe.

We saw a pass that collapsed, it was assumed that the tunnel was just caved in, it was just, water was trickling out.

We found it was wide open behind that collapse.

- Really?

- Oh, wow.

(upbeat music) - [Dave] At that point, they could seriously start their restoration efforts so Chris and his team went to work first raising money, then using the original drawings from Sutro himself to fashion the structure just as it was originally intended.

- [Chris O] On the day we visited the site, it looked like this.

Now look at what it's like today.

- [Dave] All of this work was done just like it was in the old days, with a few exceptions for modern construction standards.

Now friends of Sutro Tunnel can finally offer tours inside the tunnel.

- Now, they're not finished by any means, the restoration continues full force, with plans that will transform the site over the next several years.

- [Chris P] What we want to get to, eventually, is have a walking museum, have it climate controlled.

This is one of the few buildings on site that has electricity.

We also have some displays of our historic items that we find.

- It looks like a museum right now.

- [Chris P] Yeah, we're working on it, it's at museum level, but we want to get just a little bit better.

(calm music) We are now on the tailings.

The tailings is after the ore's been processed, and as you work your way out, you see this ore cart track?

You would move the ore cart track out, and move the tailings and dump them as you were going.

- [Chris O] So we're actually walking on, not only parts of the tunnel, but also now parts of the Comstock.

- [Chris P] The processed ore. (Chris O chuckles) - [Dave] It honestly feels like a museum just walking on the grounds.

Over the years, the Sutro town site and much of the tunnel site has disappeared, but there's still a lot of history to be found here.

- [Chris P] Any of the historic items that you find on the site came from the site.

A lot of these historic artifacts are finding their way back to us, which is great.

- [Chris O] Which is really cool, yeah.

Some of these pieces of history have been hiding in plain sight.

Chris shows us an example.

- This is a planer.

It was found half buried in a hole in a pile of sagebrush on the other side of this wall.

(Dave chuckles) And the legs were broken, we could barely tell what it was, they dug it out, lifted it up, and fully restored it.

Well, almost, we've got a couple more wheels, this one and one there, and then everything will be functional again.

- So this would've been cutting wood?

- Yeah, this would plane wood.

Take your piece of wood and feed it through here, and it would turn and it would shave it down.

- But this is beautiful, and it's like a work of art.

It's like a sculpture.

(calm music continues) There's a lot of beauty to be found on the site, including this relatively recent edition, a Victorian that moved from Carson City in the 1970s.

Chris says the plan is to turn it into a bed and breakfast and make the site an event space.

They already offer weddings here, but this would let you stick around for the honeymoon.

You've made this really appealing.

- Yeah, and it's not me, it's our volunteers.

And I gotta say a thank you out there, a shout out.

Our volunteers and our donors, these guys have been working on this for years.

We've got elks, moose, desert pigs.

Tons of individuals are- - Groups of people?

- Groups of people, yeah.

(laughs) - It sounded like a zoo.

(Chris O laughs) - Yeah, it did sound like a, well, sometimes it is out here.

No, if it wasn't for all of these folks, our volunteers and our donors, none of this would be happening, this site would've been collapsed, dilapidated, or worse yet, that development, at one time, was thinking about developing up here.

- [Dave] Oh, it would've been gone forever.

- [Chris P] It would've been gone forever.

So because of volunteers and donors, we're able to be successful at this project, it's not me.

- [Chris O] It is time to go, but we look forward to the next steps in the Sutro restoration.

- [Dave] There's much more to enjoy in Dayton, of course, the old town area is another step back in time, with some buildings dating back to the very early days.

(cheerful banjo music) Dayton also has its very own state park, open year round.

- [Chris O] The drive to Genoa is less than an hour, about 25 miles or so, and takes us into Carson Valley as the shadows begin to stretch across.

Tomorrow should be a beautiful day.

- [Dave] Genoa has its own state park, Mormon station, and we begin our day there.

We're greeted by Ranger Rob Reif.

- Welcome to Mormon Station State Historic Park.

- [Dave] Thanks for having us.

- Really nice grassy lush Park.

- [Chris O] I was gonna say, it's a beautiful location.

- Kinda work like a city park, but we also work as a piece of very valuable Nevada history.

- You know, part of what is great about this park's location though, is you're right in the middle of town, I mean, you've got the major intersection, you've got all the traffic, you see this park when you come through Genoa.

- And honestly, that's partially a result of the fact that this was the first structure that made the town happen.

The 1851 log cabin that was actually built by John Reese, with the help of Abner Blackburn, he had gone to California, he came back over the mountains, saw this as the perfect trading post site, and told John Reese, hey, I've got this perfect place for a trading post.

And this is it, this is our 1947 replica, mind you, but it is the scale, and it is built at the exact same spot that John Reese built this building on.

Before this, there had been trading posts that were built outta tents, they were built with maybe four walls and a canvas top, but they were just meant for the season.

- So now why is this a replica?

- Well, because unfortunately in 1910 there was a fire, so the original building was just rubble.

This is where I need to warn you, it is built to scale.

(Dave chuckles) So yes, duck your head throughout the entire museum, (Dave and Chris P chuckle) unfortunately.

- I was gonna say, I think I'm clear, but just barely.

- Just barely.

- Just barely, yeah.

- I get a little noggin knock there.

(Chris O chuckles) - So when I was talking about the original cabin burning down in 1910, unfortunately this is the one remnant we have of the original 1851 cabin, and you can tell the fire was pretty substantial.

- I was gonna say, that is really cool that you at least still have a little bit of that old cabin.

- At least a piece of it, it is the first permanent non-native structure that was built in the state of Nevada, after all.

And this is a picture that comes to us from roughly the 1880s period.

And you can see it actually changed a little bit, it had a facade added to it by then.

- It almost looks like a storefront.

- It is, I mean, if you can imagine when this first opened up as a trading post, prior to its opening, they were charging $2.50 for one pound of flour.

Now in today's money, that's 70 to $80.

- That's amazing.

- That's crazy.

- If you wanted a just a drink of whiskey, that's 50 cents, that's about 20 bucks, for just a single drink.

- So you have a lot of artifacts in here, are these all from the area and all period pieces?

- Yes, I mean, some of them have been donated, and we'll point out, some of the stuff that's just laying here is actually stuff that's been dug up on site.

Say for instance, every time we have a water leak, they dig up something new, (Dave chuckles) and find out something that's either from the 1920s, or maybe even the 19th century, just in the dirt.

And this is what would actually be an oxen shoe, not a horseshoe.

And you can tell because they're actually in two pieces, because oxes have cloven hoses.

And once again, in the California trail, you know, if you have 2000 pounds that you are hauling in your family's wagon, you want an oxen, not a horse.

We actually put our museum in chronological order.

So we like to start off with the people who were here first, obviously the Washoe tribe, (cheerful banjo music) who really made this area their winter home, where they like to spend their summers in Lake Tahoe, you can imagine it's obviously a better place to spend the winter down here.

When you were walking up to the park, you might have noticed a statue of a Norwegian on skis with a balancing pole, Snowshoe Thompson.

Very interesting story, this is actually a pair of, one of many pairs of wooden skis that we found from his personal home, and this is an example of his balancing pole.

And some people call him the father of Sierra Skiing, because he probably was the first guy to actually ski in the Sierras.

But what he did with them is amazing, because from 1856 to 1876, he actually delivered the mail from Placerville to Genoa over and over and over again.

Summer, fall, spring, and yes, winter.

Having the mail come from California is absolutely critical.

What do you do if you want a piece of lace bought in San Francisco?

Well, Snowshoe Thompson is gonna deliver it to you, that's the only connection we have for mail for almost 20 years.

- [Chris O] The museum boasts a lot of variety for a small building.

The park asks for a $1 donation to visit the museum, but you definitely get a bang for that buck.

Next up, the stockade.

- So I do wanna point out that it's a little bit different than history.

First of all, the height, you might notice, maybe seven feet or so here.

The original height was somewhere between 12 and 14 feet.

- Oh wow.

- Oh wow.

- So we're talking about a very, very tall structure.

- So where they had short doors, they had very high walls.

(chuckles) - Very high walls.

Why did they need to be so high?

- [Rob] Well, you gotta defend your livestock.

- [Dave] That's true, we don't have a lot of that happening here today.

- And that's the other thing, this nice grassy, beautiful park, the wild flowers we've got showing off here beautifully today.

We do this for the public today, make a nice, beautiful place.

In fact, sometimes we hold weddings here.

In fact, we have a wedding this weekend that'll take place here.

But in history, this would've been a very dusty place, it would've smelled like livestock, obviously.

(Chris O and Dave chuckle) Very different than the wildflower smell we're experiencing right now.

- [Dave] Back in those dusty days, this was also a wagon repair shop, and Rob introduces us to a couple of vintage customers.

- First of all, we'll visit the prairie schooner, which actually would be the most common form of wagon that settlers were using on the California trail.

And I like to kind of compare it to your old station wagon, or maybe your lighter crossover SUV that still has good fuel economy.

(cheerful music) It's lightweight.

That being said, they still weighed, on an average about 1300 pounds, and with stuff up to 2000 pounds worth of their home goods in the wagon, and haul as much as they could with the thing.

Next to that is actually your California rack bed freight wagon, which we like to compare to the semi-truck of the day.

That can haul a lot of cargo, that can haul more than twice that weight of the prairie schooner.

- [Chris O] So what are the plans for the park?

- What's hoped for in the near term is to get our 1908-era blacksmith shop running.

Early on, state parks actually just thought this was a 1940s era barn.

(Old West music) We're very fortunate to still have this building in existence due to really mistaken identity.

It's obviously not a barn.

Once we started uncovering things more and more, I'll point out to something that's just behind you, for instance, these horizontal stripes, kind of show you that this wood was actually from an older structure.

This is basically leftover marks from plaster, they're called laden plaster markings.

And so, this is something that was obviously taken from an old building, and if you do further investigation into some of the pieces of wood, you'll even find that some of the nails are square nails.

So what happened is they actually took the wood from an older building, and then made this blacksmith shop out of it in 1908.

You see, the massive amount of tools all over the walls have been donated by a lot of the local ranches.

It was really even just a couple years ago, this was still a pretty plain looking building.

We actually just this last month, in fact, got a list of things we need to do to this to make it fire worthy so that we can actually stoke that forge back up.

But hopefully within the next few months, we'll actually see a blacksmith working in this shop.

- That's exciting.

- And be able to give you a living history demonstration - How fun, are you gonna learn how to be a blacksmith?

- I sure am, yeah.

- You know, we tried it once, we took a class, and we were not very good.

- [Chris O] It's much harder than it appeared.

- I just wanna learn a little bit of everything that I can.

Someday I could learn how to make an actual functioning tool, any tool, I don't care what that tool is, just an actual functioning tool.

Because I think that's always amazing, when people would actually make their handmade tools, and not have to order it out of the Sears catalog.

- [Chris O] I mean, a blacksmith shop was your catalog, right?

- Right.

I mean, sometimes you needed a tool for a very specific job, and you didn't have a hardware store that covered everything in a small town like Genoa, so you'd make your tool on site if you had a blacksmith shop, why not?

- Rob, I look forward to coming back one day to watch you make whatever tool you decide you want to make.

Thanks for sharing all of this with us, this has been incredible.

- Oh no, thank you.

Thank you for coming to Mormon Station today.

- [Dave] This park is close to everything in Genoa.

Right across the street is the Pink House, also built by John Reese.

(upbeat music) A subsequent owner painted the house its distinctive color, and it became a Genoa landmark.

Today, it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it's a popular restaurant.

- [Chris O] It seems that if you cross any street, you can find something to do.

On one corner there's a bakery and cooking school, on another, a country store.

And of course, there's the oldest bar in Nevada.

- [Dave] I bet that place could tell some stories, but right now we have somewhere to be.

Just a little south of downtown is the Genoa Canyon Trail Head.

Mary Erba of the Carson Valley Trails Association is there to greet us.

- Well, you guys are in for a treat today.

- So where are we going?

- We're gonna do the Genoa Canyon Trail today.

And it's our steepest trail, not by hiking, but by hillside it's the steepest.

- Well, thanks for that.

(Chris O chuckles) - But we have some switchbacks that we'll do to break that up.

- So we'll a lot of switchbacks.

- Okay, nice.

- A lot of switchbacks.

Trail Association, we build trails, and we maintain the trails.

(idle music) We have almost 70 miles of trail now, and I've worked on every single one of them, and I've either built them or maintained them.

We have to build our trails for people, horses, and bikes.

In order to build any kind of a trail, you have to go through state BLM, forest service, County, private, city, all these entities.

- [Chris O] That's a lot of agencies to deal with.

(chuckles) - [Mary] Yeah.

And then you have to show them where you wanna put the trail.

- Yeah, so then the very first step would be to go around in the wilderness where there is no trail and imagine a trail, correct?

- [Mary] Correct.

We're very fortunate we have Jeremy Bolton, who is the head of our group, and he designs all the trails, and he can look at a hillside like that and know exactly what he has to do.

And he puts the flags in where he wants to trail, and then we do the digging and make it a trail.

(water runs) (idle music continues) - [Dave] Here's Mary doing some trail maintenance of her own right here, keeping this tree from falling on her.

- I was gonna say, that's not gonna fall on us now, right?

- (chuckles) No.

- Instead of Atlas holding the world, you're holding the tree forward.

- I did that because- - She's a hero.

- We got a call saying that that tree's falling over.

It's been like this for like 50 years.

(idle music continues) - [Chris O] As we climb, Mary tells us that they usually build the trails from the middle out, so the trail heads are the last to be built.

That's a smart way to ensure that no one uses the trail until it's complete.

You know, and it's interesting, 'cause so many times switchbacks have a bad reputation, but they really make your hike easier, don't they?

- Oh, yes.

- Actually, you know, the grade of this trail is very doable.

You have some great switchbacks, because it's a very doable trail.

- It totally is.

I mean, I'm the biggest baby of all when it comes to going uphill and whining about it, and this is nice, this feels really good.

(calm music) - [Chris O] As we hike, I noticed you're kind of nudging rocks off, but you're not necessarily kicking them.

- No.

On a trail like this, where we have switchbacks, you have to be careful to know whether you have a trail below you or not, as as to whether you kick off or not.

- [Chris O] So you don't wanna necessarily kick the rock to another part of the trail because there might be a hiker on it?

- [Mary] There might be a hiker, and you don't want to bean somebody.

(Chris O chuckles) - [Dave] The Carson Valley Trail Association is a volunteer organization, and they're always open to new volunteers to do almost any job, from heavy duty trail building to carrying water out for the other volunteers, they find a place for everybody.

- [Chris O] And I have to ask you, Mary, so how did you get involved in trails?

- [Mary] I was hiking one day with some other friends and one of the girls said, if you're gonna hike the trails, you should work on them.

- [Dave] You can see evidence of the trail association's work all along this trail.

This trail system connects with other trails, and allows you to hike just about anywhere.

- [Chris O] You can join the Snowshoe Thompson Trail, the CR Canyon Trail, the Clear Creek Trail, and even up to the Tahoe Rim Trail.

- The more I see people using the trails, the more I like it, because even though I have to go out and keep doing maintenance on it, that's fine, I just like to see people having a good time, and to see more people out here.

- This might be a good point for us to maybe stop for the day.

- Yes, we've been getting afternoon rainstorms in this, you don't wanna get caught in that.

- Agreed.

So we'll stop here.

Thank you so much for showing us this trail system, it's been wonderful.

- You're more than welcome, I love showing it.

- So we have seen Genoa today, we saw Dayton yesterday, we still don't know which one is the oldest settlement, we'll let them fight it out, we don't really need to settle that today.

But we do know this, you can really enjoy yourself in both places, so now we know we can come back to both and have a great time.

- And this trip is really made for a fun adventure.

If you want more information about this episode or any of our wild Nevada shows, you can visit our website at pbsreno.org, and stream us with the PBS app.

- Until our next Wild Nevada adventure, here's hoping you can enjoy some adventure of your own.

See you next time.

- [Rob] So when you go into the Pink House, (guitar chord) that happens.

And then when you close the door, (guitar chord) that happens.

- That is really cool.

- It's so cool.

- That's probably the best doorbell I've ever seen.

(chuckles) - [Rob] Ever.

It takes two people to get this hat on.

- Is it gonna take two people to take it off too?

Refreshing.

(All chuckle) - [Announcer] Support for PBS Reno and Wild Nevada comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer (pastoral music) who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

- [Announcer] Travel Nevada helps provide travel inspiration and experiences for those interested in creating their own Wild Nevada adventures.

(adventurous music) For more information, visit travelnevada.com.

And by Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, (idle music) Charles and Margaret Burback, Sande Family Foundation, Christine Perry, Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation.

June S. Wisham Trust, the Hall Family, Dillard and Meg Myers, Sarah and Leonard Lafrance, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by individual members.

(idle music continues)