Nevada Day revisited: 1953 & 1960

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

Reprinted from the Nov. 3, 1953 Nevada Appeal:

There were 36,281 people in Carson City for the Nevada Day celebration, the state highway department has estimated. Based on its traffic count, the department figures that there were 1,515 here Friday night. An estimated 26,000 were here last year.

Because of the streams of people moving past the electric eye which keeps attendance, it was impossible to keep an accurate check of the festive throngs who crowded the state museum over the Nevada Day weekend, but according to J. W. Calhoun, director, the museums played host to well over 6,000 visitors.

The register book showed entries from nearly every town in the state and an impressive number from California.

A feature during the time of celebration, and one which proved of special delight to children, was a group of wild animals lent to the museum through courtesy of the Nevada Fish and Game Commission, which was placed on view in the south yard. Included were two coyotes, fawn, bobcat, ring-tailed cat and porcupine.

A new mineral room exhibit which attracted much attention was a miniature stamp mill built to precise scale. The mill was donated to the museum by Jack Marker of Los Angeles, son of the late Ludwig N. Marker, a Nevada resident from 1872 until his death in 1950. The stamp mill, which he constructed as a hobby, is complete in every detail with ore bin, chute, stamps, shaker tables, stairways, pulleys, belts, etc. It can even be operated by use of a small motor.

The mammal room, always a favorite with museum visitors, also had new exhibits ready for Nevada Day, these being the world’s record catch cutthroat trout from Pyramid Lake, handsomely mounted and spotlighted on the room wall, and a new small mammal exhibit of the tough and courageous badger, prepared by curator of mammalogy Frederick J. Holley in a deceptive pose of stalking a ground squirrel, with a diorama background of sage, pasture land, and pinion hills painted by staff member Nancy Bordewich.