Nevada business owner, saloon keeper and former pawnbroker. I run Carson Demo and the 1863 Odeon Saloon in Dayton, tell Comstock stories, help preserve the Sutro Tunnel, and share odd projects and history on YouTube as Creative Chaos Chris.
Dayton
There’s a place above Dayton that used to feel like a secret. A high overlook near the water tank where you could stand for a moment and see the country the way the old-timers saw it; wide, quiet, and tough. It sits near the route that climbs out through
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Not everyone buried in the Dayton Cemetery started out famous, but one of them sure ended up that way. Meet Charles H. Russell, born in 1903, who grew up surrounded by the same sagebrush and stubborn wind that still define our Nevada home. Like many Dayton kids, he started small,
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I’ve often wondered why the street that The Odeon sits on is called Pike Street. At first glance, the obvious guess is the Northern Pike, but that doesn’t hold up. Northern pike aren’t indigenous to Nevada. They were introduced into at least one Nevada water (Comins Lake
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Before Dayton was known for mining, mills, and mischief, it had a woman with a drill and a dream. Meet Helen Rulison Shipley, born right here in Dayton on Jul. 23, 1870, and destined to become Nevada’s first female dentist. In an era when women were expected to sew,
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The other day I was working at the Odeon when I overheard a lady ask her husband if the mount on the wall was a jackalope. Now, this is an old European mount, just the skull and antlers of a deer. Naturally, my ears perked up and I started listening
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From the Odeon Archives I had planned for this story to have a different opening and to share it at a different time. But seeing as there was a bit of an incident at The Odeon, I suppose this is the best time for the retelling of this tale. We
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We’re having a very warm, dry winter so far. That’s Nevada for you, extreme, unpredictable, and never quite the same year to year. Just a couple winters ago, many of us were snowed into our homes for days, some without power or heat. In my home, we are
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There is an incredibly important holiday on the calendar this week that we should never have forgotten but largely have. Maybe because of complacency, or just the way humans tend to forget why we have the freedoms we do and allow past mistakes to repeat themselves. On this day in
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The Odd Fellows who built our Odeon (1863) Before Dayton had much of anything official, it had neighbors who showed up. In 1863, the Odd Fellows—Dayton Lodge No. 5—put their money, muscle, and ideals into a brick hall on Pike Street. They called it the Odeon. Upstairs was
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Sometimes history gives you a lesson without ever preaching a word. All it takes is two entries in the same man’s journal, 11 years apart. In November of 1885, Alf Doten is getting ready for Thanksgiving in Reno. He notes the weather, of course, because he always does. Then
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Sometimes a story lands in your lap and sometimes you’ve got to dig. I never knew much about Alf Doten. Back when I first started digging into Adolph Sutro, I remember UNR and Ron James mentioning some of their findings on Sutro in the Doten journals, but the project
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I haven’t really sat down to write in years, but lately I’ve been doing it a lot, and I’ve been really enjoying it. Most of what I like to read, learn about, and write is local history. There are so many stories to share that it’s