Italian Pioneer Settlers were Successful Emigrants

Around the turn of the 19th Century, 26 of 27 ranches on the Carson River between Dayton and Weeks (south of Silver Springs) were owned by Italians. Many of these hardworking immigrants had first been attracted to the silver and gold strikes and settled in the upper Comstock towns of Virginia City, Gold Hill, Silver City, and Dayton.

For instance, the Pedroli/Quilici family settled in Silver City. They not only mined and hit a lucrative gold site, but also had a dairy, and called the entire operation, "The Milk Ranch". The family fared well and in 1906, they built the stately Quilici Mercantile on the corner of Pike and Main streets in Old Town Dayton. It was a successful boarding house, bar, and restaurant for years. Unfortunately, it burned down at the hands of an arson in the early 1982.

Much of the Quilici family history was documented by Reno resident, and longtime Nevada State Journalist, Ty Cobb, who wrote the column “Cobbwebs” for years. The Cobb family also had early ties in Dayton and were friends of Cliff Quilici and his family. According to Cobb, Cliff and June Quilici took time from their busy lives to find their roots in the Old Country when they visited Europe, where they found more than century-old family houses still standing.

The Quilici’s also visited Switzerland’s Italian sector in the remote village of Bodio. They discovered their family home from an old photograph estimated to be more than a hundred years old.

“From this house, a stream of Quilici clansman immigrated to America,” said Cobb, adding it was a, “brood of thirteen headed to the U.S.”

Besides finding Bodio, the Quilici’s continued to Northern Italy to the village of Lammari on the outskirts of Lucca. Best of all, they found a building that had been a Quilici family home and it still contained the carved family stone Quilici crests on an outside wall!

Clifford Flake Quilici was born in Dayton on May 25, 1918, and died Nov. 3, 1995, in Reno. He was raised in Dayton, graduated from UNR, was a retired Colonel with the Marine Corps, serving for 33 years in Korea, WWII, and two tours in Vietnam and was commissioned in 1941 at Quantico, Virginia and won numerous medals. He is buried in Reno.