SILVER DOLLARS AND WOODEN NICKELS: Best Little Waterfall in the West

Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels is a weekly feature in the Appeal’s Sunday Opinion pages in which the Appeal gives Silver Dollars to those who deserve recognition and occasionally a Wooden Nickel to those who deserve criticism.

SILVER DOLLAR: American Automobile Association, AAA, has bestowed on Carson City’s Kings Canyon Waterfall as one of the 10 best waterfalls in the West, so we humbly submit to the powers-to-be in this community to capitalize on this honor and market our small wonder as “The Best Little Waterfall in the West.”

In its Via Magazine, AAA writes about the waterfall and one of the volunteers who helps maintains the trail that leads to the waterfall, Johanna Foster: “In the driest, most waterfall-challenged state in the union, Kings Canyon seems an especially precious gift of nature. Fed by snowmelt so pure it requires little processing before becoming Carson City drinking water, the year-round 25-foot cascade splashes into a creek that winds like a greenery-fringed ribbon through parched and rocky sagebrush terrain. Johanna Foster loves the waterfall and knows it well: She is one of the volunteers who maintain the half-mile trail that switchbacks 175 feet up to its base from a parking area just west of downtown. “I’ve probably been there 100 times, enjoying the cool spray on a hot day, the lush vegetation, and the wonderfully fresh smell,” she says. “And every time I think the same thing: ‘I can’t believe I’m in the desert!’”

SILVER DOLLAR: To South Lake Tahoe’s Jamie Anderson for winning the silver medal in snowboarding Big Air to go with her gold medal in slopestyle and to Reno’s David Wise for winning gold in the halfpipe at the Winter Olympics.