Phil Galbraith, who works locally in talk radio, has been collecting bits and pieces of Reno history for years. After learning that Reno started out as a single bridge, Phil dove into the town’s past. Now, he thinks he’s figured out the approximate “birthplace” of Reno.
At a Starbucks on the north side of town, Phil lays out colorful images and maps across the table. These papers, along with the enormous digital archive Phil keeps on his Google Drive, illustrate all of the work he’s put into this process. “That's where Reno was born,” he says, pointing to an image of his nephew, standing in a parking garage (in above left section of our photo collage). “The driveway of the Circus Circus. And they don't know it.”
On April 1st, 1868, a man named Joseph Graham drove a stake into the ground, somewhere in the middle of nowhere— he was surrounded by miles of nothing but horny toads, jack rabbits, and lots of sagebrush. The lonely bridge and lodge owned by Myron Lake, a hotel entrepreneur, were nestled on the bank of the Truckee River, just to the south.
Myron Lake owned much of the surrounding land, and he wanted to make it big. In 1868, he contacted the Central Pacific Railroad and made a deal. He would provide the railroad with plenty of acreage for construction, and they would build a depot at Lake’s river crossing. That’s where Joseph Graham came in.
“(Graham) was down here in the valley, getting ready for the Transcontinental Railroad to come through. And it was his job to make a town,” Phil says. “In an interview he did in 1929, he gave that quote,” he slides over one of the papers and points to a highlighted paragraph. “And that's what got me looking for it.”
The quote from Graham states that he “set the first stake of the survey of the boundary of Reno on the bank of the English Ditch.” Phil was hooked. But finding the exact location of Reno’s conception was not so straightforward.
Phil holds up another paper. It’s one of the first maps of Reno. The map displays columns of land plots— land that was eventually auctioned off to individuals that populated the town. But this was just a primitive sketch of early Reno, and for Phil’s purposes, it wasn’t quite good enough. “These guys were Civil War veterans, not civil engineers,” he says.
“I'm not inputing their work back in 1868. They were a) in a hurry and b), this map was good enough for what they needed at the time.” The illustrator of the early map had sketched the Truckee in as a reference, and it wasn’t exact. Phil needed precision in order to do this right.
“That's where the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company comes in, back in 1899.” Phil pulls out another map. This one is more colorful, and it has straighter lines. “They did maps all over the country. Not for directions…but they wanted to show what a building was made out of, how big of a fire risk it was. They didn't know they were creating a macroscopic example of history for geeks like me,” he chuckles.
“These are hyper-accurate maps, even though it was 38 years later. Here's West Street, Fifth Street,” Phil traces his finger over the printed image. “And that is exactly where the ditch was. They measured that out to the inch. Because where water was, especially, was important for fighting fires. Now to figure out where they drilled that first day, I put together the old map from 1868, and measured it, as best I could, to the 1899 map. And you can see where they said the ditch was, and where it actually was.”
Phil used satellite imaging to acquire an accurate modern day aerial view of downtown Reno. Using image blending software to combine the satellite image with the earlier maps, he came up with what he figured was the best approximation for the coordinates of the birthplace of Reno.
In addition to tracing Reno back to its very first stake, Phil has collected a wealth of historical data and information over time. His interest was piqued, in particular, by a collection of drawings. The first of the collection was completed in 1888. It’s called “Reno 20 Years Ago.”
Phil says that the artwork became very popular. “The guy named McClellan, who painted it, got asked to do it again and again,” he says. “This is before, you know, lithographs. You couldn’t make mass copies.
“And each of them was a little different. Some of them did have Myron Lake, others didn't. Some had Chief Winnemucca (a Northern Paiute leader, born a Shoshone around 1820) in there. I've seen three of those paintings here in town.”
Phil isn’t only concerned with Reno’s past. He thinks a lot about the future as well, and sometimes he worries about where the Biggest Little City is headed.
“You fly to Vegas, mostly. You drive to Reno. Coming in from California, there's an awful lot of casinos you have to pass before you get to this town,” he explains. “That has taken away a lot of our ‘oomph.’
A long time resident, Phil has seen the slow decline of the gambling industry. “Virginia Street isn't one tenth as popular as it used to be,” he says. “Commercial Row and Virginia Street used to be the place. The Tesla plant came, too. That was good for jobs, but it has gentrified this town, bad.”
Phil is considering taking a second job, beyond his job at KKFT 99.1 FM, as rent and cost of living prices have skyrocketed. “I gotta have my Reno goodies,” he smiles.
Like many Renoites, Phil wants to see action. He remembers the Harrah’s casino, which recently shut down.
“They were going to renovate the bottom floor (for) shopping, and that kind of thing. The rest of the towers we're going to be apartments,” he recalls.
“That didn't happen. The company that was doing it ran out of money. And now we’ve got three giant eyesores downtown. They've been sitting there for years.”