St. George's Episcopal Church, Austin, Nevada

Drive east from Reno on US 50, “America's Loneliest Highway,” some 180 miles, and after climbing the winding road ascending the Toiyabe Range to 6,600 ft., you'll be in Austin, NV, a “living ghost town,” population 192. It's a far cry from the 10,000 plus souls that once scaled, scoured and scrambled over and about hill and gulch of the Reese River Mining District seeking the narrow but silver-rich quartz veins that geologically mark the area.

Silver was first found in 1862 by either a pony express rider “who kicked over a rock” (a notion which might be

challenged in that these young riders had more immediate concerns, i.e., time-sensitive mail schedules and/or being chased by hostile Shoshone than having the time to dismount and tarry about kicking stones) or, what is more likely, the discovery may be traced to an account of one William Talcott, stage station hand, who found the silver specimen while tracking down some horses that had strayed. David Buell grid-mapped the town to be and it took its name after his partner, Alvah Austin.

It is said that St. John's Episcopal Church came into being as a brainchild developed by a group of Episcopalian

devotees on Christmas Eve and was rhapsodically delivered-up with due religious conviction and eloquence to a much enthused congregation by a reverend Blackstone on Easter Sunday. The faithful responded promptly with generous contributions including a $9,500 donation from a mine superintendent and a twenty dollar gold piece from each and all employed by another local operation. The church was designed in the manner of Gothic Revival and was erected promptly and outfitted complete with a 900 lb. silver bell and a pipe organ that had come around the horn. Since its beginning, St. George's has provided the spiritual needs of its denomination with Sunday services and services otherwise.

Whether it's the isolation or the heartiness of body and soul attracted to mining on the frontier, each camp provides a history suggesting a uniqueness not found where close proximity between population centers compels similitude. In Austin, three well-preserved churches predominate –- “atheists were out of place in Austin.” However, in other matters, it was also a town that didn't take itself too seriously. There was a book written, “The Town that Died Laughing” that reflects this and Austin's newspaper, “The Reese River Reveille,” while dedicated to accuracy on mining matters and news referrals, was a “lively” and “lighthearted” publication chronicling the carrying-ons and antics of those local denizens characterizing the Reese River Mining District. An off-shoot of the paper reinvented itself as the “Sazarac Lying Club” and tall tale fabrications abounded. Some of them made their way into national journalism and, when taken seriously, “gave exaggerated impressions of the mining frontier.” One lie morphed into a full blown scam: some disreputable types sold thousands of “The Reese River Navigational Co.” shares to Easterners. The company was purportedly created for the purpose of freighting rich ores by barge from mine to mill on the Reese River. “River” –- indeed? On a good Spring runoff, the Reese River is hardly enough of a stream “to dampen the underbelly of a toad that should attempt to cross!”

In 1864 there was a mayoral bet between the two opposing candidates. Shopkeeper Ruel Gridley lost and he had to tote a 50 lb. sack of flour through the streets of Austin. His labor was occasion for a turnout of townspeople, camp folk from near and far, horses, bedecked with patriotic finery, dogs and a marching band. There were pennants, fanfare, cheers and hoots. Afterwards, the sack was auctioned with proceeds going to the national “Sanitary Fund” (a direct precursor to the Red Cross) to aid hospitalized Civil War veterans. This same sack of flour kept getting auctioned off throughout Nevada and California and eventually made its way eastward raising $275,000 for the cause. This “Sanitary Sack of Flour” survives and resides at the Nevada Historical Society in Reno. Mr. Gridley's store still stands on Austin's main street.

It would seem that the town, too taken by its jeu d'esprit, did not even take the sober business in preparing for proper hangings seriously. A convicted murderer had to ascend the gallows three times in order to belatedly meet his maker. The first time the rope wasn't sufficiently secured. The second time the noose was loose; he slipped through and down he went again, untethered, knocking himself out in the fall. The third time they, arguably, finally got it right by tying him to a chair, hauling him back up, testing the noose and dropping him through the trap door, chair-bound and unconscious.

Austin produced at least a couple of notable women: in 1864, Emma Wixom was five years old and leading Austin's Gridley Flour Sack Parade while singing a popular Union song of the time, “John Brown's Body.” She went on to study music in Vienna and, at 26, became an internationally famed opera star. Paying homage to her beginnings, she adopted the stage name, Emma Nevada. And in 1919, just weeks before women's right to vote, Clara Dunham Crowell became Nevada's first woman sheriff and did the office good credit by chasing down and arresting many a rustler and miscreant and did not hesitate to go it alone into saloon brawls to break up fights.

In the 1960s, Darla Winrod Cantrell recalls, as a child, that the church didn't have plumbing facilities and that

parishioners had to use an outhouse affair at the base of the bell-tower. She could lower the lid and stand on top to reach the bell-tower rope and ring its silver bell announcing to one and all...

My thanks to Darla, who, with no notice, gave me a bit of time from her duties as sheriff's dispatcher and the minister of St. George's Episcopal Church.

Merry Christmas,

Danny Goeschl