• Nob Hill Volunteer Hose Company #5
• History of the Ruby Hill Area - Eureka Mining District by Walter A Paroni
• Ruby Hill in the 21st Century
• Paula Peper shares some Eureka History and Photos
• Diamond Valley

Links to other sites of interest:

• UNR Eureka Maps  This is a link to a very interesting set of maps, published by Sanborn Map and Publishing Co. and posted on the University of Nevada Web site, showing  Eureka streets and businesses from the years 1886, 1890, and 1907.  
• Eureka Photos by JB Monaco from the 1880s.
• Eureka, Nevada Weather
• Nevada Ghost Town Photos

Many of the historic buildings can be seen in this photo from the 1800s.

Eureka Main Street facing north in the 1950s.

#4 Eureka High School  This building was completed in March, 1924 and financed by a school tax raising $3000.  The building housed the 1-12 grade students until a new school was built on Vandal Way in 1969.  Elementary students continued to attend school here until 1995 when a new grade school was built.  View on the right is the school when it was new.  Demolished in 2012 by order of the Eureka Co. School Board.

Nob Hill School, Eureka, 1800s
Destroyed by an earthquake after being open only a short time.
(building on right in photo is St. Brendan's Church)

First high school graduating class in Eureka, 1887.

#9 Eureka Cafe
This establishment was really two buildings.  In 1873, the northern half of the building was erected.  It was built from local quarried volcanic tuff.  The constructor, William H Clark, ran a general merchandise and hardware store downstairs and upstairs provided offices for doctors, dentists, and lawyers.  A Nevada legislator and attorney, Thomas Wren had offices here.  In 1907 the building was converted to the Zadow Hotel and the southern portion of the building erected.  When the Lincoln Highway (now Highway 50) opened in 1915-16, the price of a hotel room was $2.50 a day under the American Plan.  In 1920 Ed Herrera acquired the property and changed the name to the Eureka Hotel.  Pete Laborde, former owner of the Nevada Club, owned this hotel in the 1930s.  Around 1942 the Eureka Cafe began serving American and Chinese food and continues to do so today.

 
Photos of the underground tunnels below the Eureka Cafe.  Left is the access from Monroe Street.  These tunnels were used for storage in the early days.

#11 Eureka County Courthouse
The Nevada legislature created Eureka County in 1873. Officials renovated a former ice rink donated by Judge John O'Darrow to serve as the first county courthouse. A fortified jail and fireproof vault were added to the 40-by-100-foot wooden building located at the intersection of Main and Bateman Streets.

After fire destroyed hundreds of buildings in the town of Eureka in 1879, officials became concerned about their wooden courthouse and accepted plans from George C. Costerisan for a more formidable structure. The county hired R. Ryland to construct the courthouse. He withdrew from the project shortly after the completion of the exterior, at which point Costerisan finished the interior. J.S. Whitton supervised the construction, and McNally and Hawkins of San Francisco provided the heating and plumbing.

Construction of this two-story brick structure began in 1879 and was completed in 1880.  The building was added to the already existing jail which remained in use through the 1980s.  Construction of the courthouse cost $38,000. It was designed in a modest Italianate, turn-of-the-century style, but additional expenses for a vault and other fixtures brought the price to $50,000. The brick two-story structure measures 50-by-80-feet and stands fifty-one feet high. A second-floor balcony supported by brackets rests over the main entrance. Exterior accents include brick pilasters that rise to a metal-bracketed cornice, and a parapet wall with detailed brickwork.  The large iron shutters adjacent to the windows and doors of the courthouse (and other buildings of the town) protected the windows from fires and other damages. 

Interior details consist of an imported Spanish cedar judge's bench and balustrade and gilded accents throughout. The  second-floor courtroom is recognized as the best preserved in Nevada. It measures forty-five square feet with a nineteen-foot high ceiling of pressed metal. A suspended gallery at the rear provides seating for one hundred. The semi-circular witness box placed in front of the judge's bench is distinctive because of its shape and its unusual location. When it was completed, it was the finest courthouse in the state of Nevada outside Virginia City.  The building is one of two nineteenth-century Nevada courthouses still in use today; the other is the one located in Virginia City.

The two large bells in front of the courthouse were rung as fire alarms by two of Eureka's several volunteer fire companies.  One was cast in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the other in San Francisco.  Each bell was identified by its tone. 

Court house in the early 1950s.  Building on the left was a fire house at that time.

#15 San Francisco Brewery
This building was the San Francisco Brewery in the mid-1870s.  Beer was bottled in the back and there was a saloon in the front portion.  The original wood structure burned down in the fire of August, 1880.  Later that year a brick structure was built on the site by H. Mau and Company.  After 1900 Frank Brossemer purchased the building and ran a saloon in front and bottled soda pop in the back. 

The Eureka Post Office was located here from 1941 until it moved to the present location in 1982.

#17 Eureka Opera House
Eureka, Nevada is proud to have one of the best two restored and usable opera houses in the state. The other is Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City. The Eureka Opera House, built in 1880 when the population of the town was about 3,000, has always served as a gathering place. Eureka’s Opera House, today, is a full service convention center and Cultural Arts Center. The building is used for conventions, meetings, and community functions as well as cultural presentations. It is open to the public for tours year-around. It has meeting, kitchen, and catering capacity to accommodate over 300 people.
The Eureka Opera House was built on the ashes of the old Odd Fellows Hall, which was destroyed by the great main street fire of August 1879. The Opera House was used for the first time for the New Year’s Eve Costume Ball in 1880. The November 11, 1880 Eureka Daily Sentinel newspaper stated, "The building is, according to the plan of work now being carried on, to be thoroughly fire-proof, built with masonry (volcanic tuff) walls, brick and iron front, and slate roof. From the basement to dome the new theatre will be furnished as none of the class have ever been in Eureka. Its arrangement is pronounced to be first-class, for ventilation, for heat, for means of egress in case of fire, and in fact for a "thousand and one" reasons it is bound to be a beneficial and permanent monument to the memory of those who have erected, and who will so soon elegantly furnish the same for the edification of our people."
Eureka was on the main tour circuit for opera and theater performances and many famous personalities performed here during the town’s hey-day. The opera house served as a community auditorium showing anything of interest including boxing, speeches, plays, graduations, and dances including annual Nob Hill Fire Company Masquerade Ball held every year from 1880 until well into the 1900s. The first silent movie was shown there in 1915 and then in the 1920s the opera house was changed into the Eureka Theatre and “talkie” movies were presented.
In December 1923, a fire caused by a misplaced lantern destroyed the oleo stage curtain that was originally hand-painted in Italy. The curtain was replaced in 1924 with a new one painted in Minneapolis, featuring advertisements for local businesses from 1924. The 1924 oleo curtain still hangs at the front of the stage.
The last movie was shown in 1958 and the building fell into disrepair.
In 1990, Eureka County acquired the structure and began a three-year restoration. The Opera House reopened on October 5, 1993. The Building received the 1994 National Preservation Honor Award.
Other historic elements such as the original projectors from the early days of the silent movies, the first "talkies" projector, and a carbon-arc spotlight are on display. Historic graffiti has been preserved back stage from the early days and the tradition has been continued with signatures of the people who have performed at the Eureka Opera House since it was reopened.

The Opera House maintains a monthly schedule of cultural events as well as local events. Make them an excuse to visit and explore historic Eureka, the best-preserved historical mining town in Nevada.

 
Eureka Opera House Oleo Curtain and player signatures.

 
Opera house in the 1950s, before restoration.

#20  Crew Car 29
This crew car is the only piece of rolling stock in Eureka County left from the Eureka & Palisade Railroad.  The once thriving railroad began in 1875 when Eureka businessmen formed a railroad company and sold stock to wealthy San Francisco bankers who made their fortune from the Comstock mines in Virginia City.  The narrow gauge railroad was built to haul refined ore from the Eureka smelters and several other mining camps, some eighty miles to Palisade, where it connected with the main line of the transcontinental Central Pacific Railroad.  This crew car was used as sleeping quarters for the men working on the rail line.

The first train of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad arrived in October 1875. The railroad was revived in 1912 and ran until 1938. When construction of the Eureka & Palisade Railroad began in 1874, Palisade became the headquarters for the railroad where it met the Central Pacific Railroad. By 1878, 31 million pounds of ore had been shipped through Palisade. Once the Eureka-Nevada railroad folded in 1938, only a handful of people were left in Palisade and after its post office finally closed in 1961, it became a ghost town.

The northern section was built in 1879 by W. J. Smith and Company as a saloon.  This building also survived the fire of 1879.  After the fire it was opened as the San Francisco Clothing Store by H. Kayser in the spring of 1880 after the Tognoni building burned earlier in March.  And it survived the August 1880 fire.
Wholesale liquor was sold in this portion of Raine's Market in 1886 by W. J. Tonkin.  It was also a  warehouse, a saloon, a men's clothing store, and a notions store. From the 1940s to 1978 it was the Eureka Drug and Fountain containing a restaurant and soda fountain and later a curio shop. 
The original pressed tin ceiling can still be seen in this portion of the building.  It was combined with Raine's Market in 1979.

#28 Nevada State Bank  
This was the original site of the first livery stable in Eureka, established by Ham and Hunter in the early 1870s.  A stone building was built here later, but prior to 1873.  Housed in it was what was advertised in 1878 as "The Corner!  The Largest and Finest Saloon in the State."  Charles Lautenschlager bought the building in 1879 and promptly tore it down.  He had just completed a new building when it was burned down in the fire of April, 1879.  He erected the present store building in October of the same year.  A saloon operated in the front and the Old Corner Chop House was in the rear.  Around 1912, the building housed the Lani and Repetto Saloon and Eureka Brewery.  In the late 1930s, the Farmers and Merchants Bank, founded by Edna Howard Covert Plummer in July, 1920, was moved to this location. (Edna C. Plummer held the distinction of being the first woman in the nation to found a national bank.  She was also the first woman district Attorney in the nation serving in that office in Eureka County in 1918.)  The Farmers and Merchants Bank was the only bank in Nevada to stay open during the Bank Holiday of 1933.  Banks were ordered not to re-open after the closing of a certain business day.  The Farmers and Merchants Bank simply stayed open 24 hours a day until the holiday ended.  Later this bank became the First National Bank of Nevada, in 1981, the First Interstate Bank of Nevada, in 1996, Wells Fargo Bank, and today Nevada State Bank. 

First National Bank and Eureka Drug in the 1950s.
 

#37,38,39,40 Eureka Cemeteries
 

Five cemeteries are located on the west side of Eureka in Grave Yard Flat, or as it was known in the 1880s, Death Valley.  The cemeteries can be reached by driving west past the courthouse up Ruby Hill Avenue.  the first one on the south side of the avenue is the Catholic,  

next, the Masonic. 

Across the road to the north are the County and City Cemeteries and further north, nestled in the piñon/juniper trees, is the I. O. O F. Cemetery.  

In the 1870s and 80s, the County Cemetery was privately owned by C. W. Schwamb, an undertaker who had an office above the Sentinel Office.  It is adjacent to the City

#42 Saint Brendan's Catholic Church
This still-active Catholic Church was erected in 1874 to replace the original wood structure built in 1871 by Father D. Monteverde.  The present stone structure was built for a cost of $5000 from volcanic rock that came from the Chandler Quarry above the west side of town.  

Eureka's first two-story brick school was located on the south side of the church.  It was built in 1879, but was torn down in the late 1930s.  It had be vacated in the early 1920s due to structural damage.

#43 Mary Wattle's Home (private residence)
Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Isles-Wattles was born on April 21, 1845 in Stratton, England.  At the age of five, she sailed to America with her parents.  As a young woman, she married Luther Wattles in Illinois.  In 1903 the family came to Nevada.  They purchased a ranch of 1800 acres with range rights in Nye County, between Eureka and Tonopah.  They successfully operated these holdings for 30 years, then sold the property, and moved to Eureka.  In 1920, they took possession of 320 acres in Italian Creek, 4 miles northeast of Eureka.  It is believed that this brick home was built prior to 1883 by Claude Ford, owner of the Eureka Livestock Company.  In 1927, Mrs. Wattles purchased the seven-room brick dwelling.  Ten years later, she bought an eight room home in Los Angeles, California where she spent several of her winters.  At the time of her death in March, 1952, Mrs. Wattles was 106 years old and the oldest living Nevada Resident.  After five generation of family ownership, this property changed hands in 1995.

Note from Theodore Ardans August, 2012

Hi Scott,
I hope someday to meet you. I have only heard of your town thru my father and I sadly was never taken there as a child. My father is Pete Ardans, son of Leon Ardans and Marie Ardans (nee Harriet) who are both long deceased. My father Pete is still alive living in Arizona, where I grew up. My work has taken me to Bellingham Washington, where I am now.
My father and I speak on the phone regularly, and he still tells me things that I had not heard before. Even when he speaks of things he has told me before, I listen for new details. Your town has a tremendous history, and I assume you know.

Today he brought up Mrs. Wattle. We had been talking about Lincoln, and the assassination, and my father said that he knew a woman that had known John Wilkes Booth as a child. She was my father's neighbor in Eureka, she died at 106 when Pete was fourteen. He often could hear Mrs. Wattle calling for her daughter Belle, who would be working in the garden. Mrs. Wattle had been a few yrs younger than John Wilkes Booth, but she shared that with my father that she had been in the same neighborhood in the east, after she had come from England.

My father's teenage job in Eureka was to deliver groceries and work in a store . My father worked for the store [now Raine's Market] in the 1950s.

His brother is Rene, and sister Rose.

I hope that you would consider this bit about Mrs. Wattle for your piece on the web, and I will print your page and mail it to my father so he can see the great work you are doing.

Best Regards
Theodore Ardans

The Eureka Mining District
From 1869-1879 Eureka was a major producer of lead in the United States.  Sixteen smelters refined the ores of the mining district.  At one time 2 to 3 thousand tons of rich gold, silver, lead and iron or a day were smelted from the Eureka mines.  Total production exceeded $135 million.  The smoke was so heavy at times, that the black clouds floated over town, leaving soot and dirt everywhere and poisoning the air.  The name "Pittsburgh of the West" grew out of this somber aspect of early Eureka.  Ditches were dug and pipes laid up the hill to deliver the smoke high in the air where it could be blown away by the wind.  The Eureka area was once wooded.  The trees within 50 miles of town were stripped over the years to make charcoal to power the smelters.  Many early immigrants, notably Italians, made a living by gathering wood and burning charcoal for Eureka's smelters.  By 1885 most of the easily accessible ore had been mined and the Eureka Consolidated and the Richmond Consolidated smelters ceased operation by 1891.

#46 Slag Heap
This black pile on the south end of the town is the site of the Richmond Consolidated Smelter.  Small portions of the smelter, slag heaps, and the ditch for the smoke stack can still be seen on the east side of Highway 50.  The first furnace on this site was built in 1871 to process ore from the Richmond Mine.  Later that year, the furnace and mine were purchased by the Richmond Consolidated Mining Company and two other furnaces were built along with three hydrocycle or water jacket hydrocycle furnaces to replace the old smelter operation.  In 1890, the Richmond Smelter stopped operations and around the turn of the century was dismantled.

Eureka County was crossed by the historic Pony Express route.

Eureka overview in the 1970s

Photos on this page courtesy of  Lee Raine © 2007-2013. 
Historic black and white photos on this page courtesy of Connie Hicks.