Nevada's First Dance

On Dec. 31, 1853, at the mouth of Gold Canyon, on the original California Trail where Nevada’s first gold was found in July 1849, the once obscure site on the lower Gold Canyon Creek was where Nevada’s first dance was held, and where Dayton first grew into a booming milling town in the 1860s.

According to pioneer Fannie Gore Hazlett’s memoirs of life in 1849-1857 Dayton in the “Historical and Reminiscent Sketch of Dayton, Nevada” published in the Nevada Historical Society Papers of 1921-22, Nevada’s first dance was held in Dayton on Dec. 31, 1853. Fannie wrote:

“As in all the pioneer mining communities there was dearth of women. In the summer of 1853, outside of the Carson Valley (this area was known as the Carson Valley Bottom then,) Mrs. McMarlin, Mrs. Walter Cosser and the wife of the blacksmith were the only women in Western Utah, what this area was called.”

Since the name of the blacksmith’s wife was unknown, doing more research, the NHS staff had added the blacksmith’s name in Italics in a postscript.

“One authority says this woman was the wife of Henry Vansickle, but another of this historic time written by Myron Angel, author of the Thompson and West History of Nevada 1881, says her husband’s name was Thos. Pitt, the blacksmith there in 1853.”

Continued Hazlett: “Mrs. Cosser had a twelve year old daughter, and late that year a new family had arrived which boasted several members of the fair sex. Perhaps, it was the latter encouragement that decided the citizens to celebrate the advent of the new year by a dance in the upper story of Spafford Halls’s log-cabin store. It is recorded that three women did not attend the dance and the blacksmith’s wife had gone to California. Still, the women and girls at the dance numbered nine and ranged in ages of ten years and up so some of them came a long distance and represented three-quarters of the fair sex in Western Utah. Indians were welcomed as partners and probably, one of these was the Princess Sarah Winnemucca who habitually attended the dances held in Johntown later. (Her father was chief of the Paiutes and had been named “Onemucca” by two white trappers because they saw him wearing one moccasin. Glorying in the appellation, he had adopted it, and had sanctioned its corruption to “Winnemucca,” or “Winnemuck”).”

Another source in Thompson & West, History of Nevada 1881, said, “Old Mrs. Mott attended too.” (Would not want to leave any historic names out of the fun to be had at Nevada’s first New Years Eve dance!)

The First Barbecue 

"In strong contrast to the nine women guests at the party were the approximate 150 men, gathered from far and near, and representing the occupations of miner, rancher, or station keeper. The Paiute Indians of Western Utah were also bent on celebrating the pale-face New Year, for down at Chalk Hills near Mound House, the next morning the first recorded barbecue in Nevada was held and the dancers of New Years Eve were short two horses, while the rest of the animals were in peril of similar treatment. However, it is recorded that all the later were duly rescued from the Indians who had driven them off from the settlement the evening before," Fanny Hazlett wrote in her book.