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Today on Outdoor Nevada, we roll into Elko.

Here we visit J.M.

Capriola, a saddle and gear shop where the traditions and techniques of old are still practiced today.

Then it's right down the street to the Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum to learn more about Elko's rich history.

While I walk around downtown Elko, I tour the incredible art scene.

And finally, I meet up with a local artist who gets her inspiration from the land she calls home.

All this today on Outdoor Nevada.

♪♪♪ (John Burke) Being in Elko County is interesting.

It has different feels to it.

One feel is small-town USA where everyone knows each other and looks after one another, where the sheriff welcomes a visitor with a dining suggestion.

The second is rural where stretches of land are inhabited by livestock and wildlife, and the third is the mountains.

The Ruby Mountains run through Elko County and draw you in with their majesty and their beauty.

The town of Elko is the largest city in the county, has a little over 20,000 residents and growing.

We've been here before; sure am glad we're back.

Downtown Elko, Nevada: It's an amazing, vibrant area.

Its art and culture are on full display.

It's also a great place to learn about the history of Elko.

My first stop, J.M.

Capriola.

J.M.

Capriola is one of the oldest rancher and cowboy tack and gear stores in America.

They've helped outfit the West since the late 1800s.

This isn't a chain or an outlet.

This is tradition, custom craftsmanship and artistic expression at its best.

I know, it's not what you would think when you talk about saddles, chaps, bits and spurs, but it is.

I met up with John, whose family has taken care of the tradition and the craft for a couple of generations now.

You know what's amazing is these are all meant to be functional, I would guess, but at the same time, they're beautiful.

I mean, there's an art to this, isn't there?

(John Wright) Yes.

So everything that you see in here is going to be functional art.

That's what we like to put it as, because it has a purpose.

Everything has its beauty, but it needs to be functional at the same time.

I mean, we can make the most beautiful saddle or the most beautiful bit, but if it's not functional, what's the use in it?

-Tell me about you're sort of part of an important lineage in American history and certainly in Nevada history, and it starts really with Garcia.

Tell me about him and how you get involved.

-Well, Garcia came around the late part of the 1800s, early part of the 1900s.

-Who was he?

-Garcia started out in California as an entrepreneur coming over here, and he had built goods, bits, spurs and saddles.

He'd come out with a wagon and would sell all of his goods to the different ranchers across the area and the cowboys that worked on the ranches.

Everything took off, and his business was booming at that time.

He decided to move out to Elko, and he did.

He opened up a shop just on the same block right here a few doors down from where we're at right now, and he built the World's Fair saddle.

I mean, he and all of his craftsmen were fantastic artists.

-And at some point, now tell me when this happened, your grandparents got involved.

-My grandparents got involved in the 1950s.

They bought the company from Joe Martin Capriola, but Joe Martin Capriola used to work for G.S.

Garcia.

He went out on his own building saddles, car tops, doing his own repair stuff.

Garcia respected him and would always kind of throw him a bone and some business his way and then when he left, Capriola's was the elite of the elite and took over as far as plying this Western area as far as Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, California, everything.

Capriola's was the main staple in the area for quality goods.

-And now it's you.

Do you feel a certain responsibility in that lineage?

-I've always felt a big responsibility because, I mean, we brand ourselves as the guardians of tradition and by doing something like that, you have to be able to back it up, and I feel on a daily basis we back everything up that we sell here.

All of our products that we build and sell are all-- they're not mass produced, so they're built from one person start to finish, and that's the same way Garcia and Capriola did it.

There was no chain gang, no assembly line, so we have the pride and everything that we build is one at a time.

There's not very many places out there in the world that still to this day are the way we build things.

-Well, you're a craftsman, you're an artist, and I want to see exactly hands-on what you're working on.

Can we go take a look?

-Yes, we can go take a look.

Everything that we do, like this is a sample.

This is a back cinch for a miniature horse that we're building a saddle for.

All of this was hand-drawn in the leather.

So it's all sketched in, drawn, and then from that point we take a small swivel knife and we cut all of that design into it.

Then from there, we have multiple tools to pound it down or to raise it up to give it all the repousse look of the three-dimensional and the texturing of this.

So this is something that when leather is tooled, it's going to out-last leather that is not tooled.

-You are a true artist and a curator of Nevada history, and for that I thank you.

-Thank you.

John and everyone at J.M.

Capriola truly are guardians of tradition, so much so they do everything they can to share the history of their craft in Elko.

And because of that, John pointed me just down the street to the Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum.

Here I met with Nevada's true expert of everything that was and is Elko.

Hey, you must be Jan. -I'm Jan. -Nice to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

I'm the director of the Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum.

Welcome to downtown historic Elko.

-This is my kind of place.

Jan, tell me about the museum here.

How long has it been, what can I learn?

(Jan Peterson) We've just been open three years.

The building was built by G.S.

Garcia.

-This building was?

-This building, this very building, was built by G.S.

Garcia who was a very highly acclaimed bit, spur, saddle maker and harness maker.

He came to Elko in 1893, Thanksgiving of 1893.

He and his wife came from Santa Margarita, a little town over in kind of middle coastal California.

Elko even then was a very successful, progressive ranching and mining town.

So their thought was, according to family legend, they were going to come over Thanksgiving weekend-- so apparently Black Friday has been going on a long time-- and make some fast money and go back home.

They came to Elko and they sold out almost immediately in the two-day period, but they also discovered they loved Elko and moved here permanently in June of 1894, and G.S.

lived here the rest of his life.

-Isn't that amazing?

All that history is still here, and this was his building and it's still being used.

Doesn't that amaze you?

-It's part of those legacy stories and preserving history, and I'm a big history sap on that anyway.

Preserving it and presenting it is the way that you keep those stories and memories, that history alive, and passing it on to the future.

-Has it always been called Elko?

-It's always been called Elko.

There are numerous stories on how Elko got its name.

It was named by Charles Crocker, who is one of the "big four" they called them, the big executives of the Central Pacific Railroad, and he was a city guy.

So he's coming from San Francisco, and he sees these big antlered animals-- -I knew it!

-Down on the river bottom and grazing, and I personally think they were deer but he thought they were elk, or elk sounded more majestic.

-Better than Deer-o.

-Yes.

So he added the "O" for emphasis, and it became Elko.

-So you can't really think of Nevada and cowboy history without thinking of horses and saddles, and I see you got a bunch.

Can we take a look?

-Well, we've got quite a few so let's go take a look.

-I find these fascinating, and they're really like works of art, aren't they?

-I call it functional art, and they're all-- to this day, saddles and cowboys are very traditionalist.

They still go out and ride the range.

They still camp in teepee tents.

They will be out for months at a time, and they embrace those traditions that have endured through those old California ways from when the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico in the early to mid 1500s and then drifted northward.

-They keep it all alive.

Tell me about this saddle here, because this is beautiful.

-Well, this is a cool saddle, and it was a championship saddle that Lou Deutsch won at a Garcia rodeo in 1937.

So he was-- when you're in a rodeo and you win an event, you get so many points.

And then if you're in another event within the rodeo, like you were in the saddle bronc and you won it and you won a bunch of events, and then you're in the bareback and you win some more points, and you might be riding bulls and you get some more.

So whoever has the most points, this is the grand prize.

-Wow!

Now you see why they try so hard.

-So it's a big deal.

-Yes, it's a big deal.

So you see a very vibrant past when it comes to Elko, but you also see a very vibrant future.

-People are learning to discover rural Nevada, the "Other Nevada" as they had for that ad campaign a while back.

There's a lot of reasons to come and you could spend three or four days, and we want you to go home and tell your friends how wonderful we are.

-I will do that.

-And send them back.

-I will do that.

Jan, thanks for your time.

-Oh, thanks.

This has been a blast visiting with you and showing off our town.

The people of Elko are very proud of their town and rightfully so.

Elko is welcoming.

You want to explore it, and when you do, it's hard not to notice the amount of art in downtown Elko.

The art is not only beautiful, it's fun to look at.

It also has stories to tell.

I was curious to learn more, so I met up with Catherine Wines.

-Well, I have to be honest with you, I didn't realize that all these murals were all over the city of Elko.

I mean, it really adds this vibrancy to the town.

When did all this happen?

(Catherine Wines) It's amazing.

It happened just a couple of years ago, and it really has added kind of a whole other dimension to the art scene in Elko.

Before there was just a lot of cowboy and a lot of Western, which I love, there's nothing wrong with that, but the murals add this whole other kind of perspective to the art scene.

-Well, I know you had a lot to do with this art coming in, and I really want to talk about it, but first I kind of want to get to know you.

You're from here originally.

-I am.

I am fifth-generation Elko County, and I don't know if that's how you say that.

-And how has it changed?

How has the town changed?

-It's certainly grown, but I feel like when I was a little kid, it was a small town and now it's like a little city.

It's just like we're kind of growing up a little bit, which is exciting to be a part of, and I mean, the art is certainly part of that.

-Yes, it sounds like you're really proud about the direction that Elko is going, and that's good to hear.

-Yes, for sure.

-I want to talk about this.

This is phenomenal.

What am I looking at here?

-So this is a Basque mural.

It's just one of the murals that we did a couple of years ago.

So the Basque, the Basque people are very important to the history and the culture of Elko County and all of Northern Nevada because of the sheep herding tradition, so this is kind of a depiction of some of that, of the sheep herding, like what we're standing in front of right now.

The quakies, the sheep herders used to carve in quakies, and all of these names you see on here are our old sheep herders that came when we were painting this and put their name on the trees.

-And literally participated in this?

-Yes, they did.

So this is really a community.

It's very important to the Basque people, even though it's just been here a couple of years.

It's really important to them.

There's people getting, you know, senior pictures and wedding pictures and stuff.

You see them all the time in front of this.

-Well, that was my next question, because this is a town that's got some age to it.

It's growing up.

How has the town responded to all these murals?

-They love them, like better than we even imagined, and we knew it was going to be great.

But like the Saturday of our mural expo, there were thousands of people that came out just to watch people paint.

You know, in a town this size, a thousand people, that's a big part of our population, and they were just walking around just watching people paint, just so excited about the new energy and the kind of-- and especially because all of the murals are located downtown.

You know, it really-- and this is our historic downtown, and really kind of trying to bring the community back downtown.

So they've really been an important part of that.

-So you're expecting to see more art?

I mean, is this an ongoing thing?

-It is, yes.

So we're planning sometime this year to do more murals.

We're going to move down Idaho Street a little bit, like more towards the east part of town.

But more murals are coming.

-Well, you've got just a plethora of stuff to talk about.

There's one down this way.

Let's go take a look.

The murals are throughout downtown Elko.

They each have a unique feel and style.

Some are very traditional, but others a bit more abstract.

They're all great, and most are right out in the open while some others are a bit more tucked away.

It's like a game of hide and seek.

It also helps in exploring more of downtown Elko.

You're always on the lookout for some new piece.

There's one mural that really caught my attention.

Catherine was happy to tell me about it and the art scene in Elko.

Where are all these artists coming from?

-From all over the place, all over Northern Nevada, some came out of Utah.

A lot of them are local.

We have an amazingly large art community here, and part of that is just because Elko is so small and so isolated that we kind of have to do it for ourselves.

We can't rely on a big city because there isn't one.

-Are you an artist?

-Well, I'm an architect.

-Yes, that counts.

-It's one of the seven fine arts, right?

-Oh, okay.

Because you present like you have a creative flair.

Tell me about this big mural here.

I brought you here for a reason, because I want to know more about it.

-This one is so cool.

This is about westward expansion, because the street that we're standing on used to be the railroad.

So the little boy, who is actually the son of the artist who painted the mural, he is sitting on a train looking out, dreaming about being either on horseback or in a wagon, something more interesting than being on the train.

-What do you dream for the future of Elko?

-The sky is the limit; we are not looking back.

We've got more murals coming.

We just had the city council let us put some pedestals in our parking corridor.

We're going to start renting art from Burning Man or from other sculptors.

-Oh, really?

You're going to bring that in here?

-Yes.

-That's fascinating.

What about the cowboy?

Because I've been walking around, looking at these murals and checking everything out.

What about these boots?

-Oh, our six-foot-tall cowboy boots.

So in 2017 Elko celebrated 100 years of incorporation, so our group wanted to do an art project to celebrate that, and we thought, let's kind of go back to our blue-collar roots and our blue-collar economy and do boots because you can leave your boots on when you come to Elko.

-I got to tell you, this town definitely feels like it's on the rise.

It's busy, it's vibrant, it's more beautiful than it's ever been and in large part due to your efforts, so thanks so much for everything that you do.

-Oh, thank you.

We appreciate you being here for sure.

-It's our pleasure, trust me.

I was really impressed by the murals and the efforts of the artistic community in Elko.

So much so, I wanted to meet a local artist.

Catherine suggested I meet one of her favorites, so we left downtown and headed to the hills.

At the base of the Ruby Mountains lives a retired art teacher.

She lives a simple life.

Here she can ride her horse and paint.

Her name is Patty Fox, and she is an artist.

You know, we used to be in Lamoille, and people would come in from out of town and say, why are you here?

You know, there's all this other stuff in Las Vegas and Boise and stuff.

I'd say because there's clean air and good water, and it really goes down to that, you know.

It's like I feel healthy here.

-Clean air, good water and good art.

-Well, and space so you can do your art.

-Has art and painting always been in your life?

(Patty Fox) Yes, it has.

In fact, I just was doing some research in Ancestry.

I just found out that somebody was artistic, you know, several generations back because I never knew where that came from.

But yes, I had an interest all the way through school.

I did work in textiles for a while as a weaver, and when I went to graduate school at Utah State, I became interested in drawing.

And then when I moved over here, I started teaching myself the watercolor and did that for years.

But now I've been working in mostly acrylic.

-Well, let's talk about what you're doing now.

How would you describe it?

Is it lifestyles of Nevada, or what would you say?

-Yes, I would say it's just-- kind of maybe that's been said before, but it's kind of a diary of your life.

So I just enjoy nature and getting out, and I just found that painting was a faster expression.

The weaving just got to be too lengthy.

And I like the acrylic now.

It's been nice to change from watercolor.

-Tell me about your process, and I'll just-- I'm going to pick one.

How did this come into being?

-Okay.

So that one is just out here on the road, the Pleasant Valley Road, and so I just-- it's acrylic, and I look for shape, and I usually draw with charcoal.

You can kind of see the charcoal in there, just like you can see in here.

And the charcoal blends into the paint so it's not removable, and so really to me they're drawings and paintings.

-How long did this take you?

-It usually takes me a few hours.

-A few hours?

-Yes.

But all that knowledge is in my head from so many years of working it through.

So it's like any craft.

-You're downplaying your brilliance.

I see what you do.

Now, this here, is this tougher because there's a human being in it?

-Not really.

I actually think landscape is more difficult.

This is a friend, Trevor.

So this is a ranch in Oregon, and this is the horse gatherer.

So I've tried to take experiences that I've had.

You know, I think you got to paint what you know, so all this stuff I could tell you stories about.

So it's really just that I'm a visual-- you know, I'm an imagery person.

-This one looks totally different than the others.

Tell me about this one.

-Okay, that's funny.

Yes, I thought I should take that one down.

So that's kind of one stage I have two of-- I guess you'd say more like psychological paintings where there's a lot of symbolism in them, and sometimes when I'm in that mood, I'll do those.

And they're fun because, you know, they tell me a story.

-What story is that telling you?

-Well, it's about a friend that was, you know, hunting and just the fact that he cared about the environment.

That's actually a snakeskin I found, you know, when I was out there.

So if I can combine elements that can go in the painting, I'll do that too.

-You're amazing, you're incredible, and I know you have something in this book that was a specific project.

What was this?

-Right.

So we have a group called the Monday Morning Painters, there's five of us, and we go somewhere all winter long.

This is what I decided to work on last summer in the canyon because we go there every week, and I just-- every time, every day I would do it, or I might do two or three.

I have them dated, and they show where they are like beaver ponds, you know, and you might do like just sketches.

And then like I say, so it's the whole summer which was really fun to have.

-Emotionally when you see all this, do you look back and go you know Patty, I'm kind of proud of you.

-Um, I think it's only been honestly in the last year that I've really felt like I can paint about anything.

I mean, that sounds strange, but you know what I mean?

Because for years I would limit myself and say no, that's too hard, you know.

So I felt like once I got through the equine that they were the most hardest animals to get correct, and what I learned also is that I really like drawing back into it.

Like on this one or any of these horse ones, that if it wasn't right, I could just take a charcoal and draw it correctly, and I like the graphic quality of painting, that it can be both drawing and painting.

-What does it feel like from an artist's standpoint, somebody sees your work and they really like it and they appreciate it.

What does that feel like inside?

-Well, it feels really good.

I guess I don't paint for that though, you know.

I paint because that's kind of what I have to do.

That's what I feel is my life's journey is I'm a visual artist, but I don't put it on the public too much.

-The artistic mind fascinates me, and yours is as good as they come.

-Oh, well, thank you, that's nice.

-I love your work, and I love being here and spending the day with you.

So thank you for showing this to me, presenting it to me and letting me see it through your eyes.

It's been a real pleasure for me.

I appreciate it.

-Well, thank you.

I'm really glad you guys came over, and keep promoting the arts, I guess I could say.

-Will do.

♪♪♪ Elko, Nevada is much more than it seems.

On the surface it's rugged, yet beautiful.

The land is an inspiration.

It's a bounty, it's a playground.

The activities are abundant, and there's something for everyone to enjoy.

It's when you look a bit deeper.

Elko is rich in history, culture and tradition.

And the people I met not only were welcoming, they're very proud of their home, very proud of Elko.

I was reminded of how important it is to recognize what's around you.

The details that make your city, town or neighborhood your home.

It's the people in your community.

It's the traditions of the cultures around you.

It also comes down to what you can do to make your home better for everyone.

This is what Outdoor Nevada has helped me see.

It's not only the places, it's the people.

Elko is an inspiring place.

Nevada doesn't disappoint.

I'm looking forward to my next adventure here, and I hope you'll find your way here too.

Find your way to Elko.

♪♪♪ Support for Outdoor Nevada comes from Jaguar Land Rover Las Vegas, inspiring the spirit of adventure with confidence in any terrain or condition.

Information at jlrlv.com.