Mining exhibit at state museum turns 50 today

Back in 1947, margarine magnate Max "The Major" Fleischmann called Judge Clark J. Guild's courtroom.

Fleischmann had New York designer Walter Teague with him at the Nevada State Museum, with hopes of getting Teague to design a mining exhibit for the museum's basement inside the former U.S. Mint.

Fleischmann, Guild and others had talked about a mine exhibit since before the museum opened in 1941. World War II shelved those visions as the basement became a 25-bed emergency hospital that ultimately never had to be used.

With the war over, the mining exhibit idea returned to the front burner. Fleischmann had a passion for the idea, and that day he had a potential designer at his side.

The call disrupted court in session. That didn't discourage Fleischmann.

"Judge, I want you to come down to the museum right way," the Major said.

"Major, I'm holding court," replied Guild, a founder of the Nevada Day Parade nine years earlier and a museum trustee until he died in 1972.

"The hell with that court," Fleischmann told him. "This is more important."

The mining exhibit beneath the Nevada State Museum today celebrates its 50th anniversary. As it opened on Nevada Day 1950, some 6,000 people passed through the 300-foot-long exquisitely detailed exhibit that to this day still has visitors doubting that it is not a real mine.

Museum history curator Bob Nylen can't count the number of times visitors have said: "Now I know how you make money. You have a mine downstairs."

"I've taken dignitaries and groups from around the world through the exhibit," Nylen said. "A Russian official once asked 'Is this real?' in broken English."

There are no events scheduled to commemorate the day, Nylen said, but he did want to acknowledge the significant anniversary of the museum's best- known exhibit. He does hope to reprint the original guide to the mine exhibit next year.

Fleischmann donated $50,000 to build an exhibit that Teague estimated would cost $150,000. Costs plummeted with the donations of 10 tons of casting plaster from Blue Diamond Corp. and more than two carloads of timber from Sam Jaksick of Reno, the I.H. Kent Co. of Fallon, the Oliver Lumber Co. and the Nevada Lumber Co. of Carson City. Mining companies in Nevada donated the machinery on display.

Teague traveled the state to visit mines in the late-1940s to give his design the authentic touch that remains convincing a half century later. Local miners, including museum trustee Bill Donovan, built the exhibit.

"The simulated mine is by far the finest I've seen in the United States," author John Park wrote in his "Guidebook to Mining in America."

State Sen. Mark Amodei's grandfather, Debs Longero, helped build the exhibit as an employee at Donovan's mining operation in Silver City.

"As opposed to working in a real mine with the heat and discomfort, working in the basement of the museum was quite a good deal for a hardrock miner," Amodei said in describing Longero's experience.

Timber framing holds back rock walls made of casting plaster. The miners built some of the discomforts of a real mine into the exhibit. Often enough, the 6-foot-4 Nylen is reminded of these when he backs into a 5-foot-10-inch-high cross beam.

"This was designed to give you a feeling of a mine in the Comstock," Nylen said. "They worked in mines and knew what it was like to be in a mine."

The museum hired Jim Calhoun to help build the mine. Soon after he became museum director, a job he kept until 1972. Calhoun and Guild have wings named after them behind the mint building.

Among his personal papers, Guild wrote about the opening day for the mining exhibit: "At that time, one of the highlights of my memory, and which will remain with me always, was seeing the Major escorting people down through the mine. How proud he was of the fact that the museum had a mine."

In the weeks before the opening Fleischmann noted brand new suspenders on one of the miner mannequins. That ruined the authenticity for Fleischmann, so he went to a bar, saw a guy with a well-worn pair of suspenders and bought them on the spot, Nylen said.

In the late 1980s, the mining exhibit faced closure because it did not meet modern safety standards. The museum worked with the fire department to bring the exhibit up to code.

A fire sprinkler was installed, but it didn't take away from the historic feel of the 1940s mining era represented. The pipes innocuously fit in to the decor as if part of the mine.

A couple of displays do reflect the Comstock era in the 19th century, but predominantly the exhibit reflects contemporary mining of the 1940s.

"The theme has been broadened to make this exhibit a live and stimulating exposition of modern mining, not only for silver, but for gold, copper, tungsten and the vast store of minerals and chemical deposits (in Nevada)," reads a brochure, describing why a $15,000 model of the exhibit was built before work began in the basement.

The model now is at the Historic Fourth Ward School in Virginia City.

Curiously, the mining exhibit fills basement space that stored bullion and coins made from silver mined from the Comstock Lode while the mint was in operation from 1870 to 1893.

"It's still considered our finest exhibit," Nylen said. "Fifty years later it's still one of our signatures, along with the mint. We take it for granted, but it's a drawing card to our state."