The Desert Canary of 1919 Reveals Oldest House in Nevada
Laying on the desk next to my computer right now is a greenish colored, small-sized book containing the photograph of the head of a donkey on the front page. It has 142 pages and was published in 1919 and it is called “The Desert Canary.” It was a high school annual that was published by the students of the Lyon County High School, No. 2, Dayton, Nevada!
In case you were wondering, the donkey’s head on the front of the Desert Canary signifies the years when donkeys were used inside the mines, like in the Sutro Tunnel, because they recognized the odor of bad air and refused to go farther into the back of a long tunnel.
Can you imagine how much this old school annual means to me as a 1955 graduate of the old high school that is now the Dayton Community Center? It is impossible for me to give the book the tons of credit it deserves when it comes to Dayton history, including names of young women and men who attended school here, the special history of these times when Dayton was a milling town. Although Nevada’s first gold was discovered here at the mouth of the canyon to the West in 1849, Dayton was not a mining town but mainly a milling site for the precious metals discovered nearby!
As the Historian for the Historical Society of Dayton Valley and curator of the Museum, the history noted in vintage books fascinates me. So, a short article on page 141 of the little book, “The Oldest House in Nevada” caught my eye:
Among the curiosities of Dayton is the very oldest trading house in Nevada is situated at the mouth of Gold Canyon, surrounded by Nevada’s beautiful state flower, the sagebrush. The lower part of the house is substantially built of stones as a protection against the Indians. The upper part is wood. It is built on the order of a cabin of the earliest days, with only two rooms. There is but one door and window in the house.
No one knows what the inside of this house is like, as the door is padlocked and window barred, but there is a large knot hole in the one side of the wall and through this, one can look in. All that can be seen inside are boxes and cobwebs as it very dark. No one has lived in it for years so it is very dirty. This trading house is being preserved by the community as an object of historical interest. (Later recognized as the oldest house built in Nevada by the pioneer families, including the Walmsley’s whose ancestors settled at Como in 1859 and soon moved to Dayton, where they lived for the rest of their lives.)
A photograph of the house is featured inside a Nevada first settlement display at the Dayton Museum.
