PS The University and Diversity of Nevada By? RURUS STEELE. (Reprint of an article published in the Sunset Magazine for May, 1914) = |. eS CA 09S hfe YAeHe | The statue of John W. Mackay in front of the Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada . : The Great American Desert—thrilling feature of the school geography came to mean Nevada more than anything else-—is being sponged off the map of these United States with half a generation ago and which finally water and gasoline. Horace Greeley, after his wild ride with Hank Monk in 1859, always spoke of it as the awlul desert. But “‘awful’’ meant nothing worse than dryness and remoteness. The water of irrigation projects is eliminating the dryness and the gasoline of the automobile has conquered distance The UNIVERSITY 222, DIVERSITY PALOMINO stallion with arching neck and muscle- ridged barrel led the dozen brown and mottled mares of his seraglio up a silent hillside with that eternal vigilance which, among horses as among men, is the price of liberty. The hoofs of the daintily-stepping herd left hardly a mark even where the gritty soil was free of the sage. At the summit of the ridge the horses became so many Borglum statues while gazing down into the valley of the Truckee. The stallion had halted them when his eye picked out a group of the enemy on the bench above the river in the edge of Reno. A white canvas could be seen to fall to the ground down there and the men could be seen waving their arms. Presently the echo of a tremendous shout- ing floated up the ridge. The enemy might be organizing a truly desperate chase. The stallion whirled and with the mares at his heels settled into one of those forty- mile dashes that save the flanks of Nevada wild mustangs from the branding-iron and their mouths from the bitter taste of a bridle. The men did not pursue. None paid much attention to the horses except a young multi-millionaire from New York who wondered where their riders were, but even he forgot the herd rigidly posed on the sky-line when the canvas veil dropped from the statue of his father, which was indeed the work of Gutzon Borglum. The bronze was John W. Mackay come to the Com- stock again. With the stripping of the canvas his face set in an eternal stare across the valley to Mt. Davidson from beneath the brown crust of which he and his companions in their day had extracted seven hundred million dollars in gold and silver ore. But why should Mackay, who knew more about that stupendous dis- covery than anybody else, stare? Plainly Mt. Davidson did not contain the answer. The figure of John W. Mackay, brought suddenly into the sunlight of the Univer- sity of Nevada quadrangle, was beholding Reno, a city of twelve thousand popula- tion, at his feet, and stretching away to the foot of the Washoe range the meadows, orchards and farms which the university had helped bring into existence to replace the lizard-hiding sage-brush he had sup- posed to be the mask upon an everlasting waste. No wonder John W. Mackay leaned on the pick in his left hand, forgot the nugget in his right hand, and stared. The bronze eyes swept the Geiger grade, up which a multitude toiled to Virginia City and down which Hank Monk drove Horace Greeley at breakneck speed to keep the lecture appointment at Placer- ville, but his attention must have been instantly diverted by the whistling of loco- motives on three separate railroads that entered Reno. One of the whistling trains was just setting out for New York with thirty carloads of Nevada alfalfa to be used in putting race-winning energy into the thoroughbreds -of the stable of James R. Keene. Another train had brought in for shipment to San Francisco fat steers which not the native bunch-grass, but this same wonderful forage alfalfa, had run up to five dollars over the market. The third train,,drawn by a huge Mallet loco- motive completely made over at the shops at Sparks, just up the track there, had a mixed lading of sugar from the beet-han- dling factory at Fallon, copper matte from the smelter near Ely, gypsum, cement and wool from the backs of Shropshires lately introduced from the other side of the world. Yet not even the whistling of such trains might long hold the bronze ears against the sounds that came from im- mediately behind. Ore was. sere Crushed in ative Mackay School of Nines sue @ ore would be analyzed and assayed with the same scientific exact- ness that marked the work in the mechan- ical arts and elec- trical buildings at the east side of the quadrangle, and the work in the soil, seed, chemical and home economics laborato- ries at the west side. “Mr. Mackay has a startled look on his face’ observed one oi the spectators. “Perhaps that roving band of wild horses up at the summit just now was something he didn’t expect to find here at this late day.” “IT should say,” replied a New York editor who was present, “‘that it is the evi- dences of the tame rather than the evi- dences of the wild that startle Mr. Mackay. With the proven possibilities in sight from this spot at this moment, it is probably inconceivable to a man of his shrewdness why half the population of the United States hasn’t come tumbling into Nevada.” Clarence Hungerford Mackay, son of John W. Mackay of the Comstock, and benefactor of the University of Nevada The story of modern Nevada embraces the story of a university and its work. If that bronze figure at the head of the campus quadrangle lost its name-plate it might immediately be mistaken for the symbol of the institution whose buildings surround it. Intelligence booted and belted with its instrument in its hand—that’s the Uni- versity of Nevada. The pick would stand for scientific exactness. It is doubtful whether a university anywhere else, while not neglecting the cultural arts, has reached a guiding hand so deeply into the prac- tical destinies of the state. Nevada had problems commensu- rate with its physical bigness, and the Uni- versity of Nevada projected itself into the problems so consistently that it became one of the most familiar factors in thesolution. Thus the story of the state and the story of the university are inter- woven. In the pres- ent consideration of some phases of the most interesting re- gion on the North American continent the vein of interest will sometimes wind about the campus, but as often it will lead off into the parts of the desert where man - tracks and wheel-tracks are dimmest. The desert, by the way, has lost the brace of adjectives that thrilled the class in geog- raphy half a generation ago. The Great American Desert—which came finally to mean Nevada more than anything else— has been sponged off the map of these United States. Water and gasoline did it. Scientific exactness was the directing force. Mr. Greeley put a good deal of the awe into the awful Great American Desert. Hank Monk gave him a runaway ride around the precipices in 1859 and he remembered it vividly whenever he took up his pen to write a few reminiscent columns for the New York Tribune. Awful, with that stage ride left out, meant nothing worse than dryness and remoteness. Water and gasoline are getting closer day by day to the total elimination of these qualities. Dryness was the bar to productivity of the soil. The Government’s twelve-million- dollar Truckee-Carson project was planned to provide irrigated farms for ten thousand farmers and to show a hundred thousand other farmers what could be accomplished by conserving the waters of rivers that ran a while and then disappeared into the ground. It was necessary for the Govern- ment to lead off, but not neces- sary for the Government to do all that is to be done. The Carey Act pro- vides the way for private en- terprise to step in in Nevada, just as it has done in seven or eight other Western states, and become the savior of the people at a first- class profit to itself. In fact, the Carey Act is enabling water to flow toward a quarter of a million promising acres. In the matter of the land above the ditch the University has shown that where the rain- fall is as much as twelve inches in a year, dry-farming may be relied upon to produce a full stand of glutinous grain. The automobile has proved itself the gasoline camel that could eat up the dis- tance between desert waterholes. Recently the legislature at Carson City nullified a statute of 1875 that forbade citizens to allow camels and dromedaries to run at large. It was after the Comstock Lode had been discovered in 1859 and men all over the world were asking what was the Dr. Joseph Edward Stubbs, President of the University of Nevada and a guiding force in the destinies of the state quickest way to get to Virginia City that Congress undertook to conquer the desert with camels from the Sahara. The Civil War brought sudden end to the benevolent experiment, even though it was the Com- stock’s gold and silver flood that kept the bark of national credit afloat in those troublous times. When, in 1901, news of a fabulous metal strike in Nevada again ‘quickened the pulse of the whole world, the gasoline camel had come into common use and the waterless roads were instantly stripped of their ancient terror and fatigue. The automobile brought the new mining camp in the farthest can- yon within a day’s travel of the railroad; it whisked the sick to the hospital; it ran with food to the hungry. The auto be- came a develop- ment factor not second even to irrigation. It drove danger clean out of the desert. Today it is the burro of the prospec- tor, the freight schooner of the mine operator, the wain of the farmer, the bronco. of the cow-man save only when he has roping to do. It is the vital spark carrying life to the utter corners of the sage. What spot can remain lonely or impossible when it is but hours distant from a candy store, a doctor, a church, or a motion-picture theater where are shown the zippingest frcnuer dramas fresh from the film factories of Chicago? Yet the ditch and the devil-wagon have not slashed out that absorbing interest that the primitive holds for every red- blooded human. The picturesque has been made accessible; it has not been destroyed. The Governor of Nevada, for instance, still refrains from wearing suspenders, although it is a genteel russet belt that makes possible the freedom of shoulder a job like his demands. There is not the slightest doubt that the ditch and the devil- wagon have transformed Nevada, while the country was asleep to what was going on, into an accessible region fuller than Wall street of business possibilities, fuller than a rubber factory of the expansion American young men crave, and fuller than the Arctic Circle of North Poles eager to be discovered. The people of the United States haven’t got around to the news yet. The people of Nevada have not waited for strangers to tell them. They have seen, and they have tackled surface-cruised possibilities with all the strength of their limited numbers. They needed, as few people have ever needed, to be saved from countless errors of experimentation that would entail loss of money and loss of time. Their attack upon the new ground needed a definite guiding hand. Scientific exact- ness was indispensable. And this is where the educational institution on the bench above the Truckee at Reno—this Univer- sity that has more functions than a uni- versity—comes into consideration. Dr. Joseph Edward Stubbs was a mili- tant Ohio parson who believed that the world could be educated out of its mis- takes. Having a booted and belted spirit within him, he agreed to resign the presi- dency of the Baldwin University of Ohio for the presidency of the University of Nevada in 1894 when he discovered that he was being asked to undertake the higher education of young men and young women who had about them a singular roominess for the exercise of every good thing they could learn. At that time Nevada’s tax- able property amounted to only twenty- three millions—today it reaches one hun- dred and fifteen millions—and the Univer- sity, with a course of study slightly in ad- vance of a good high school, had an enroll- ment of two hundred students. There were but four buildings. The school cen- tered about its college of mining. Presi- dent Stubbs’ first observation was that the expense of attendance was too great. Many of the students came from a distance. The Southern Pacific Company was _ in- duced to grant half-fare rates to all students, a concession that has never been rescinded. Next he secured from the legislature an appropriation of $38,000 with which Lin- coln Hall, a dormitory for boys, and Man- zanita Hall, a dormitory for girls, and a dining-hall were erected. During the twen- ty years of his régime Dr. Stubbs’ policy has been always to give the best instruc- tion at the lowest cost. Today a student may live at this University, that has long since become standard in its curriculum and teaching force, on $200 a year, and live well on $250, which figures are approxi- mated perhaps at few other universities in the country. The Southern Pacific has always transported the University’s fre- quent educational exhibits to any pom desired without cost. Funds were necessary to the Heelan ment of the course of study and the teach- ing force. The state was poor. National aid was secured. The University now has $100,000 a year raised by an eight-cent state tax, and from the national Govern- ment the $15,000 Hatch fund and the $15,000 Adams fund for demonstration and research at the agricultural experiment station, and the $50,000 Morrill fund ap- portioned to the colleges of agriculture and engineering; and the $6000 fund for the support of teaching in the Mackay School of Mines, derived from the $150,000 Mackay Endowment. The Mackay benefactions, which now amount to $400,000, witness to the re- sourcefulness of a president ambitious beyond the financial sinews provided him. From the windows of his office Dr. Stubbs looked out upon the Washoe range and Mt. Davidson. One day the thought came: why not appeal to the families of the men whom the Comstock made rich? He wrote to the widow and son of John W. Mackay, whose ninety-miliion-dollar estate had been probated in Nevada after Mackay’s death in London in 1902 for the reason that the elder Mackays had never relinquished Virginia City as their legal place of resi- dence. While these letters awaited con- sideration something happened. There was need of an appropriate site in Nevada for a bronze statue which Clarence H. Mackay ~ had commissioned Gutzon Borglum to make of his father. Dr. Stubbs offered by telegraph to place the statue at the head of the quadrangle about which the Univer- sity buildings were grouped. Clarence Mackay and his mother, Mrs. Marie Louise Mackay, accepted the site and at the same Me Old Con. California, from the dumps at Virginia City. thought that the bottom had been reached by Mackay and Fair, the partners cut suddenly into the bonanza which paid one hundred millions to the stockholders in the next five years. ax In 1874, when it was Seven hundred millions, in gold and silver, have come out of the shadow of Mt. Davidson. Some of these mines, famous through half a century, are still producing time expressed their willingness to erect a needed building for the college of mining. Stanford White of New York drew the plans for a structure to cost, with its equip- ment, $110,000. The Mackay School of Mines now occupies its spacious two-story home of Harvard brick in colonial style of architecture. Other universities have patterned buildings after this one on ac- count of its beauty and simplicity. For four years Mrs. Mackay and her son gave $6000 a year for teaching purposes in the mining school, and now they have provided this amount permanently with an endow- ment of $150,000. Clarence H. Mackay’s interest was aroused. An athletic field was needed. Mackay purchased land and provided one of the best college athletic fields to be found. He added picturesque training quarters and a grand-stand at a cost of $30,000. At his expense the quadrangle and athletic field were sodded. The campus is to be given a new and dignified entrance from Lake street. The Mackay donations have reached $400,000, and there may be much more to come, since Clarence Mackay has had plans made for a comprehensive grouping of a dozen splendid new build- ings about the quadrangle. The general scheme is adapted from that of the Uni- versity of Virginia. Perhaps Mr. Mackay hopes to interest others of the heirs to the Comstock fortunes in assisting him to bring the proposed new structures into existence. The Mackay School of Mines would be of interest if only because it preserves the traditions of mineral discoveries that elec- trified the world. Of much more impor- tance is the fact that it is training with scien- tific exactness young men who may go into the still unexplored Nevada hills and make new mineral discoveries as impor- tant as those that have put the spice into history. Theory and practice are as closely wedded in this school as eggs and sugar in a custard. It would seem that the prac- tical must always predominate in any class- room exposition of mining here in the very shadow of Mt. Davidson with its record of seven hundred millions production. Today Ophir, Con. Virginia, Mexican—a few of those famous through half a century—are still producing. The little armies of men still go down in the “‘bucket” to the face of drifts three thousand feet below the sur- face. According to the signs in Con Ahern’s famous old Crystal saloon at Vir- ginia City, the Comstock has produced four hundred millions in silver and three hundred millions in gold from ten million tons of ore taken out of six hundred miles of tunnels, shafts, inclines, drifts, raises, winzes and stopes. Con Ahern came to the camp soon after roistering Jim Finney, known as Old Virginia, John Bishop, Aleck Henderson and Jack Young had followed rich float up Gold Canyon just as Peter O’Riley, Patrick McLaughlin and Henry Thomas Paige Comstock, known as Old Pancake, had followed it up Six-Mile Canyon, and opened the two ends of the Comstock Lode in 1859. Ahern is a living witness to what happened when the cry of “On to Washoe!”’ went round the world just ten years after the great gold rush to Cali- fornia. It was California indeed that sup- plied the earliest rushers to the Comstock. The winter of ’59 saw San Francisco de- serted by nearly every man who could pay for steamer passage to Sacramento, whence he traveled over the snow-buried Sierra by whatever method he could afford. When the Central Pacific engineers investigated the mountain travel situation in 1863 pre- paratory to setting stakes for the railroad, they found a magnificent toll-road reaching from Placerville to Virginia City. The one hundred miles of turnpike had been built at a cost of $500,000 and was being kept free of snow in winter and of dust in summer at a cost of $50,000 a mile. The stage coaches were almost without number. Four thousand men and twenty thousand horses lifted one hundred and fifty million pounds of freight over the Sierra to Vir- ginia City in a year at six cents a pound. Con Ahern can tell you of the “hard blue stuff”? that the discoverers cursed and threw out of their way, the same being the richest silver ore ever found; of how each of the discoverers sold out for a pittance and each came to an unhappy end, Old Virginia being thrown from his horse, while on a spree, and killed; Old Pancake Comstock committing suicide after fail- ing to recoup; McLaughlin dying a pauper and being buried at the public expense; O’Riley losing everything in stock specula- tion and ending his days in an asylum for the insane. Several men remain in Vir- ginia City who knew John W. Mackay when he came in from California after the first excitement was over. They knew him when he lost his savings mining the Union ground, and when he worked as a timberman in the Mexican at $4 a day. They knew James G. Fair from his arrival, saw Mackay and Fair come together, each being attracted by the other’s mining knowledge and keen business intelligence. These old witnesses really didn’t expect much when Mackay and Fair interested James C. Flood and William S. O’Brien in their operations and began in a quiet way to buck William C. Sharon and the Bank of California crowd. These same wit- nesses thought Mackay and Fair had reached the bottom of Con. Virginia and California in 1874, when suddenly the partners cut into the bonanza that paid one hundred million dollars to the stock- holders in the next five years. “I remem- ber the day the dividends passed the hun- dred millions” says one old miner. “I was just on my way down to spend an after- noon with Alvah Gould. You know Alvah sold his half of Gould & Curry in the first days for $450, and I was going down to see him in Reno where he was running a peanut stand.” The old ones remember too when the “crazy little German Jew engineer” came to town and swore he was going to drive a six-mile tunnel to drain the Lode of water and ore.. In the size of the accomplishment and in the matter of obstacles overcome, the driving of the Sutro Tunnel by Adolph Sutro is comparable only to the laying of the Atlantic cable by Cyrus W. Field. Virginia City is said to have seen the day when it put fifty thousand people to bed at night. Some of these occupied glit- tering suites in the International, which stands today as grimly if not as proudly as in the days when it was the most awe- inspiring hotel west of Chicago. The orig- inal Wells Fargo & Co. Express. building sags as though it were worn out with try- ing to keep account of the tons of dust and bullion that came and went over its coun- ters. The old Stock Exchange building has not lost its dignity altogether. Vacant iron-shuttered brick stores tell of a precau- tion which, in thwarting fire and robbers, thwarted also the fingers of time. Virginia. City is a reservoir of mellowed romance. It is a monument recalling something which, in this unaccountable Nevada, is as In May, 1900, legend says, Jim Butler shied a stone at his errant burro and discovered the ledge at Tonopah. ¢ Since then the camp has produced fifty millions, with silver at half what it brought in the Comstock days. Nevada has witnessed perhaps the most tremendous excitement attendant upon min ing discoveries since men agreed which metals should constitute their money likely to occur again. Nature had been wonderfully kind, but after all it took giants to make the Comstock. And the race of giants is not extinct. Among men of gigantic proportions in the present decade have been George S. Nixon and George Wingfield, whose rise began in earnest with the sensational min- eral discoveries that extended from Tono- pah to other points in southern Nevada. Goldfield became their own. During a reckless and frenzied period in which for- tunes were made and lost as in Comstock days, Nixon and Wingfield were the sub- stantial and steadying influence. It was the ground, not the public, that they mined. Tonopah has produced fifty millions, with silver worth half what it brought in Com- stock days; and Goldfield has produced seventy-five millions. Both are still produc- ing. Nevada has witnessed perhaps the most tremendous excitement attendant upon mining discoveries that has occurred since men agreed which metals should constitute their money. A strike made at Eureka, Nye county, in 1864 was so over- shadowed by the activity at Virginia City that it was little heard of by the country, and yet during the following twenty years the Eureka mines produced sixty millions. At Ely a mountain of two-and-a-half per cent copper ore is being mined with powder and steam shovels, the ore being hauled by train twenty miles to Steptoe valley. They had to go twenty miles to find a place barren enough for a smelter. In carrying on this open-cut mining more earth has been moved than was displaced in excavat- ing the Panama Canal. The difference between the two big jobs is that nobody has had anything to say of the one in Ne- vada. In fact it has been Nevada’s mis- fortune that its bad side and not its good side has usually got into the world’s con- versation. Most of the talk has been oc- casioned by strangers who came only to engage in questionable exploitation and by the unhappily married who perverted the pure motive of a residence law enacted at the suggestion of President Lincoln until the outraged people have had to change their law. The discoverers of the Comstock threw away the “hard blue stuff’ that contained the richest values. Even careful Mackay and his fellows—processes not being then what they are now—left so much of value in their tailings that the Virginia City roadway is today lined with cyanide plants working out the stuff they discarded as worthless. The dumps at Eureka are to be reworked for the values that have lain neglected for many years. Ten million dollars was spent in running tunnels around Mt. Davidson that did not develop a single paying mine. Do you begin to see where the University’s Mackay School of Mines with its methods and doctrines of scientific exactness comes into the quarter-solved problem of Nevada’s mines? It will assay any citizen’s samples free of charge and tell him what to do. While specializing cer- tain young men in how to go with the smallest error to the yet unopened deposits of gold, copper and silver, it is as carefully training others who will grapple the desert for its slate, iron, cinnabar, gypsum, borax and salt. In addition to the young men it has sent into the mineral belt of their own state, the University has graduates who are doing notable work in the mines of Alaska, South America, Africa, Java and the Philippines. Four graduates are in an Ecuador mine that produced a fortune last year. Most of these fellows are making names for themselves. They feel that they must do well, for they are aware that any day may bring news of the discovery of virgin mining fields in Nevada that will make them sorry they left home. Adjoining the sixty-acre campus on the east is the sixty-acre farm of the experi- ment station. The farm is outside the range of vision of the statue at the head of the quadrangle, or John W. Mackay’s bronze stare would deepen at the sight of products he never supposed could flourish in the precincts of the sage. The man who buys a piece of the newly irrigated land in Nevada goes over and puts in some hours of some days among the boys who study their daily lessons on the University farm, and then he goes to break virgin soil and put in a virgin crop with scientific exact- ness. He doesn’t have to waste five years finding out a few fundamental facts for himself. The Government has started the water onto the land; the University sug- gests the crop. At the farm horticulture and agronomy receive equal attention. Alfalfa is the great staple. Nevada alfalfa has startling qualities. James B. Haggin shipped thirty-five carloads of it to Ken- tucky and New York last fall to feed his track horses through the winter. The biggest meat concern in California gathered cattle from all over six Western states last fall and shipped them to Nevada. Thirty- five thousand head were fed at Lovelock for months on the local alfalfa. An expert from the University was employed to weigh the cattle and the hay and ascertain the exact results of fattening steers in this way. Ever since beef began to go up five years ago stockmen have been learning that winter feeding pays. The home demand for alfalfa will increase faster than the farmers can supply the hay. The cattlemen would like to enlarge their herds. If the Univer- sity can find an alfalfa which does not require flooding and which can stand a degree of cold weather, there is no reason why Nevada should not become a second Iowa. Elko is the banner farming county. The Carson valley, with water at hand, will be- come an agricultural domain of untold possibilities. The agricultural and grazing lands of the Southern Pacific are being thrown open to the public. The railroad is to pay the expenses of a forty-acre farm beside its tracks which the University will conduct, so that travelers and visitors may see at a glance what Nevada irrigated lands will produce. Trees and flowers, as well as grains and vegetables, will be grown. In the eastern part of the state the Univer- sity will conduct, under the same condi- tions, a sixty-acre dry farm for demon- stration purposes. In Elko county record crops of Turkey-red wheat, oats and barley are being grown above the level of the ditch. At the University stock farm, adjoining the agricultural experiment station, the yards and pens exhibit cattle, sheep and hogs that have carried off first prizes at the fairs of neighboring states. Here the farm- er, as well as the student, learns why the Hereford is the best range animal, the Shorthorn the best for feeding in confine- ment. The demonstrations made with Holsteins, Guernseys and Jersey Short- horns have had much to do with the milk districts going in for strictly dairy strains. Larger cows are being raised, the extra returns more than offsetting the added cost of feeding. The stockmen have seen the profits in scientific exactness. They have bred up their beef herds. The result is an animal 000‘O¢T$ Jo JUSTIMOpUS UB WIOIS ‘AvYyORA OSINO'T ore yy ‘IoyJOU Sty puw ABYyOV “FY soUsIVIO ‘slouop ey} Aq 10} peptaoid useq s 218 BPBADN JO AjISIaATUA, 9Y4 Jo sz ay SUIPTINgG sq} Ul Suryovay, “Azrordurrs pue Ajnvaq §}t JO JUN09B UO QUO SITY} 104} SBuIPTInq peuszsyyed sABY SOI}ISIOATUN JOYIQ ‘pednois Suteq Urpin Ureur oY} TOIyM Jnoqge ‘ajsuvipenb 94} Jo pvoy oy} ye Youd pavareyT Jo ouroy A1048-0My snoroeds 8 sardno00 seulfy Jo JooyDg Avyovy oy, At the University stock-farm, the men of the new Nevada are learning S wliyae The stockmen have been taught the profits in scientific exactness. The ranges are narrowing through cultivation, but less land and the growing of alfalfa and other feed means more money. é The production of meat in Nevada in years to come will be limited by nothing except, perhaps, the amount of alfalfa The health of the University’s human animal receives as careful consideration as is given its experimental stock-farm. When Clarence Mackay’s interest had been aroused, he found that an athletic field was needed and he provided one of the best fields to be found at any college. The field was sodded and a grandstand and training-quarters added at a cost of $30,000 Reno, the seat of the University of Nevada, shows the cultural influences which have overcome the sage-brush. The bonanza kings of Comstock days built their palaces in San Francisco; those of today maintain their splendid homes in the Nevada metropolis A hundred Horace Greeleys would be bidding for fame as prophets if they stood in the streets of New York today and bade young men go west and grow up with Nevada. Dryness and remoteness have been overcome. The stage is set for the next great drama in Nevada, a drama of new people and little concerned with mines The present buildings of the University of Nevada, viewed across an acreage of alfalfa. The sixty-acre farm of the experiment station adjoins the sixty-acre campus of the college. The com- bination expresses the real meaning of the title of this article— ‘The University and Diversity of Nevada”’ Balad The plan now being followed in the building of the new university On March 4, 1914, the new library building of the University was dedicated with significant ceremonies. This building stands as the center of the cultural work ina University which, probably more deeply than any college elsewhere, has reached a guiding hand into the practical destinies of the state A gateway that is at once the entrance to the University and to the service of Nevada promised to be of benefit to the state. The young financier loves Nevada. Here is one way in which he showed it: the home- steaders on the! Government’s newly irri- gated lands at Fallon found difficulty in making their water payments for the first year or two, before their crops were fairly started. They needed a source of imme- diate return. Wingfield suggested dairying. The homesteaders had no milchers. Wing- field purchased a $20,000 herd of thorough- breds in California and distributed them among the new citizens of Fallon. He built a creamery and allowed the homesteaders to pay for their cows with one-half the profits from the milk. A hundred Horace Greeleys would be bidding for fame as prophets if they stood in the streets of New York today and bade young men go west and grow up with the country—grow up with Nevada. Verily it is the land of immediate opportunity, of largest promise in every substantial reward. Men who may know nothing of Nevada today will learn of what it offers and will do things there in the next ten or twenty years that are reasonably certain to win them bronze statues on the Uni- versity campus. Opportunity looms so large. Dryness and remoteness are ghosts that have been laid. Three transconti- nental railroads cross the state east and west; half a dozen shorter roads extend north and south. Nevada has more rail- road mileage per capita than any other state. The auto eats up the distance be- tween ranch-house or mining bungalow and the station. The stage is set for the next great drama in Nevada—a drama involving many new people—and though the mining history is but well begun, it may have little to do with the mines. Its exact nature, its scope and rewards are for enterprising Amundsens, Mackays and Bur- banks to say. No inspired vision is required to see all this; a trip to Nevada will reveal it to the least prophetic eye. Go to Reno, walk over to the gently-rising campus of the most practical of universities and from the base of the statue behold the things that make bronze John W. Mackay stare. The Sierra on the west and the Washoe range on the south and east frame a prospect that must move even a man of wood. There is room to work here. Nevada has a square mile of territory to each resident. The imagination begins to stir with the potentialities. Go into the museum of the Mackay School of Mines, to the agricul- tural station, to the stock farm; see what this land yields to the intelligent hand. Breathe the dry health-giving thought- purifying air and you will begin to under- stand about this Land of the Certain Prom- ise; you will understand why every man that merges his best self into it must become a factor; how a man seeking his work in this proving ground of the spirit might become the accepted instrument of forces of which he had only vaguely dreamed. In a leather chair in a square stone build- ing in Carson City—within a mile of the prehistoric footprints—sits a smiling young man who seems to be in pretty thorough accord with this strange Nevada. His name is Oddie. He is the belted Governor of the state. “Just how did Tonopah begin?” I asked him. “Jim Butler followed his straying burro and found the ledge sticking out of the ground” he replied. “I had the ore samples assayed. Lacking eight dollars to pay the assayer, I gave him a fifth interest. He didn’t hang onto it, though; he sold out in two weeks for $32,500.” “How much were you worth three months after the Mizpah began operations?” ‘“A million dollars.” “How much eventually?” “Maybe between three and four mil- lions.” “How much of it have you now?” “Whew! Not any of it.” The Governor of Nevada smiled the smile of confidence and understanding that probably had a lot to do with his becoming the Governor, and went on: “But I’m at least as happy as when I was rich, and what I am financially today means nothing at all with reference to what I shall be financially tomorrow. If I happen to need a lot of money doubtless I shall happen to have it.” “Why, what do you mean by your last statement?” “Nevada is kind”? smiled the Governor. “T mean merely that I have not the slight- est intention of leaving Nevada.” I ST o10Y) BULYOIS St If YOIYM JOF JUL[A JuRysTsod [wloods 9y} puy Wea WMO] puodsas B 9MODaq JOU P[NOYS VpvAEN AYA UOSBOL OL “91B}s SIU} OJUT Podd Lys ood $0}B}S ULo}SeM X{S IOAO [[@ WOIF 9[1}Bd ‘T[ey [U OUT JT “BsTVJLB [Bool Vy} WO SYJUOUT 1OF YOO[VAO'T 1B poy a10.M PBI PUBSNOY} OAY-AWIYL “4 JIpEubD SUIPJLVJS SVY Bs VJ[B VPVAON “AJIOdSOId JO UBII]S SUL[[JOMS-IoAV UB SMO YY O14} ‘BpBAeN MoU 9} JO JapuoM dLUIDS—BI[VJ[V JO UOAUB) PUBLH IU L 4seT al M Ysn Tt V3 TANIA _ 301121 057