Editor's note: Sam P. Davis was editor of The Morning Appeal from 1879-98. This poem was reprinted in the Oct. 28, 1938, edition of the Daily Appeal. The annual parade and Nevada Day celebration came to Carson City in 1938.
When first the nation saw the light of day,
This was a weird and mystery-haunted land,
With rocky battlements on either hand -
Cursed and despised and outcast of the earth,
As though Creation bungled at its birth.
The rain of summer fell not on thy breast,
The waterfowl could find no place to rest,
And mankind trod thy desert but to die.
Where the lone savage tracked the famished bear
To give him battle in his caverned lair.
Did nature frame thee in an evil hour.
Or witches o'er thy cradle, cast a spell?
Perchance they did, but gave thee richer dower,
And pens of history pulsate as they tell,
How your gold saved the sisterhood of states
When treason thundered at our Country's gates.
In days of youth Fate seemed not kind to thee;
In throes of war Columbia gave thee birth;
So hang that shield on the ancestral tree
That gives thy lineage a stalwart worth.
A grateful Union voices thy renown
And makes the halo of the years thy crown.
