Over the decades, the remote Northern Nevada mining town of Tuscarora has outlasted a mining boom — followed by the inevitable bust — as well as a rapacious mining company wanting to demolish the town in the 20th century, invasions of Mormon crickets, and a host of other challenges.
But in spite of it all, the town has survived and remains home to about 120 residents as well as the prestigious Tuscarora Pottery School, which offers summer workshops.
The latter was established in 1966 by artist Dennis Parks, who, sadly, passed away in 2021. It continues to be spearheaded by his son, artist Ben Parks, who also works as a nurse at the Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital.
The elder Parks, in fact, played a key role years ago when a mining company announced plans to develop a large-scale, open-pit mining operation adjacent to the town site. Nearly overnight, a huge hole began to spread across the northwest edge of the beautiful, wide-open Independence Valley, creeping toward the foot of the town.
The mining company discovered additional deposits beneath Tuscarora, which had less than two dozen permanent residents at the time and attempted to relocate all of them to another site.
Parks and his wife and family rallied the townspeople as well as local and state residents to oppose the plan. The classic ‘David vs. Goliath ‘appeal of the fight attracted national attention, including coverage by the major television networks, and led to the town being saved.
A visit to Tuscarora is a chance to visit a fairly intact 19th century Nevada mining town that features a number of picturesque and historic structures, many in various stages of decay.
The town traces its beginnings to the late 1860s, when a local Shoshone Indian showed gold to a trader on the Humboldt River (located about 25 miles to the south).
A small camp quickly developed to work the area and was named Tuscarora by a miner from North Carolina in honor of an Indian tribe in his home state.
By 1869, several hundred miners, mostly from the Austin district, were working the area, along with hundreds of Chinese laborers, who had been released by the Central Pacific Railroad, upon completion of the transcontinental railroad line earlier that year.
The following year, many of the Chinese workers were hired to construct a series of ditches to transport water from Six Mile Canyon and the upper McCann Creek, located a few miles to the north.
In early 1871, W.O. Weed discovered considerable silver reserves on nearby Mount Blitzen and by July, Tuscarora had a post office. Other discoveries attracted additional people and by the late 1870s, more than 3,000 people lived in Tuscarora.
The booming town had a handful of saloons, restaurants, hotels, two weekly newspapers, shops, several churches, several mining mills, and a public school. Additionally, it had a fairly large Chinese district, located on McCann Creek, below the town.
Tuscarora began a slow decline in the early 1880s, with only 1,400 people counted in the 1880 census. While mining continued to be productive on a smaller scale for the next several decades, by 1915 the town had dwindled to only a handful of optimists.
Today, Tuscarora is notable because it has some great, photogenic ruins. An old brick store, with classic frontier facade, still stands on the main street, its collapsed wooden awning barely hanging over the two windows and doorway.
Across a street is an impossibly twisted, wooden structure, the original use of which was hard to determine. Long and narrow in shape, part of the roof has collapsed, but the rest has somehow warped and shaped itself in a way that allows it to maintain some semblance of structural integrity.
Just north of the main portion of the town, you can see the solitary remains of a towering brick smokestack, which was once part of a large milling operation on the hillside.
The Tuscarora cemetery is located near the southern entrance into the town. Additionally, there are a dozen former miner's homes and shacks, some renovated and inhabited, scattered throughout the townsite. A few of the abandoned buildings still contain torn curtains and other furnishings.
In the summer months, visitors should stop to see if the Tuscarora School of Pottery, located in an historic two-story wooden hotel on the main street, is open. Amazing hand-crafted works by members of the Parks family and others are often on display and for sale. Tuscarora is located about an hour north of Elko via Nevada State Route 225 North and Nevada State Route 226 West. For information, go to www.tuscarorapottery.com/workshops.
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