Ronni Hannaman: Celebrate Carson City this Nevada Day

This year’s Nevada Day will be celebrating the 159th anniversary of statehood, and quite the annual celebration it will be right here in the birthplace of Nevada.

Not often acknowledged or even known by many residents of our city and state is that Carson City is the very heart of Nevada. It’s here this state received the authorization from President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Congress to become the 36th state on Oct. 31, 1864. Reno officially began in 1868, and Las Vegas was not yet a glimmer in anyone’s eye.

Also, rarely acknowledged is that prior to statehood, Carson City was always the seat of government whether it was as part of the Utah Territory organized in 1850 or as part of the Nevada Territory organized in 1861.

It was President Lincoln who commissioned James W. Nye as the governor of the new Nevada Territory and assigned Orion Clemens – the older brother of Samuel Langhorne Clemens – to travel to Carson City to become secretary to Nye to shepherd the admittance of Nevada to the Union.

According to the National Archives, on Oct. 26, 1864, the entire text of Nevada’s constitution as was written by the second Constitutional Convention on July 4, 1864, was sent to Washington D.C. via telegram which, at that time, was the longest telegram ever transmitted.

The transmission took seven hours for telegrapher James H. Guild to tap out the 16,543 words in Morse Code and two days to transmit between various telegraph stations since telegraph wires had not yet stretched to the east.

Guild’s transmission was first received in Salt Lake City, then resent to Chicago, then on to Philadelphia before the final transmission was received at the telegraph office of the War Department in Washington D.C. on Oct. 27, less than two weeks before Lincoln’s re-election on Nov. 8, 1864.

Copies of the constitution had been sent earlier by overland mail and by sea but failed to arrive as scheduled. Time was of the essence since Lincoln was counting on Nevada’s three electoral votes to cement his re-election from what was then a Republican dominated territory.

Thus, Gov. Nye initiated the 175-page Nevada Constitution transcription to be sent at a cost $4,313.27 – a princely sum at that time. Nevada was granted statehood just eight days before Lincoln’s re-election. It was in 1938, the first Nevada Day Parade was held in Carson City to celebrate this historic occasion that has since become one of the largest admittance day celebrations in the nation.

Everyone loves a good old-fashioned parade, and no one does it better than Carson City as over 200 entrants help us – many of them marching bands – celebrate our role as the seat of government for the past 173 years from Utah Territory to statehood.

As we watch those marching through our central downtown, it might be good to reflect on the many who lived in our city during the time when statehood was granted and what the celebration might have been on the fateful and historic day of Oct. 31, 1864.

Many of the state’s first residents lived in the historic downtown along the Kit Carson Trail and are today buried in Lone Mountain Cemetery.