Nevada Day revisited: 1938 & 1964

Editor’s Note: This continues a series featuring the Appeal’s coverage of past Nevada Days.

Reprinted from the Nov. 1, 1938, Carson City Daily Appeal:

Nevada’s largest and best Admission Day celebration in the history of the state was held in Carson City yesterday.

So well pleased were the visitors from many parts of the state that demands that the annual celebration be a fixture in the state’s capitol city were heard from every side and quarter.

Early in the morning the crowd on Carson Street began to grow. The highways from Reno, Fallon and Carson Valley were almost one-way traffic toward Carson City.

There was interest and applause from the time that Marshal Alan Bible on horseback started the long parade, in large part portraying the early days of Nevada’s 74 years of history, down Carson Street, closely followed by Gov. Richard Kirman and his granddaughter Jean Kirman, with Justice E. A. Ducker of the Nevada Supreme Court, all mounted on horses, the little girl using a ladies’ side-saddle resurrected from bygone days.

The long train of covered wagons led and flanked by scouts and riders in old uniforms of the U.S. Army blue, menacing Indians, prospectors, gold seekers, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Fremont, Lincoln, in parade-pageantry unfolded Nevada history.

And there were rapidly disappearing relics of the horse-and-buggy and stagecoach days. Even the humble ox was in the parade to see. Probably it was the first time for thousands to see a yoke of steers pulling a covered wagon traveling home of pioneers.

Old timers saw something familiar of the past in the man who played the part of a Chinese vegetable peddler offering the vegetables in two large baskets suspended from the yoke across his shoulder.

There were no Civil War veterans in the parade, but other soldiers now getting along in years marched — the veterans of the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Playing a great and important part in the celebration were the bands. Carson had its one musical organization, attractive and colorful in the reddish Zouave uniforms and caps that were made by ladies of Carson City.

The Douglas High School band has lots of credit coming, both for the excellence of its performance and the original cowboy and cowgirl costumes worn. The band from the Carson Indian School was classy and earned the second prize awarded.