Mormon Station location discussed at museum lecture

Staff Reports

State archivist Jeff Kintop speaks on "Where the Heck is Old Mormon Station?" at the Douglas County Historical Society's lecture of the month, 7 p.m. March 11, at the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center, 1477 Highway 395, Gardnerville. Admission $3, free for historical society members. Information, 782-2555.

Kintop researched the location of old Mormon Station for Associated Press writer Martin Griffin in 2004 and his conclusions place the old station right where Mormon Station State Historic Park is in Genoa, not one mile north of the town as historical markers indicate. His slide presentation includes a Supreme Court case he uncovered while doing his research. In the case, Joseph Jones vs. John Q. Adams, many of Carson Valley's first settlers testify as to where they were and what they were doing in the 1850s.

Kintop is state archivist at the Nevada State Library and Archives. He has been at the Nevada State Library and Archives for 26 years (since 1983) except for five months in 2005 when he was the acting director of the Nevada State Railroad Museum. He has been in charge of all the special projects of the State Archives, including 30 grant projects for arrangement and description, preservation needs assessments, special studies, exhibits planning, workshops and conferences, including National History Day in Nevada.

He is active in national and regional archival organizations and local historical societies. He is the president of the Washoe County Historical Society and a board member of the Nevada Judicial Historical Society. His main historical interests are the history of Nevada Government and Nevada Territory. He co-authored "What Time is This Place?" (1982), "Preserving Nevada's Documentary Heritage," (1986), "History of the State Capitol and Governor's Mansion," (1986) and "The Earps' Last Frontier: Wyatt and Virgil Earp in Nevada, 1897-1905," (1989).

He has contributed articles to "Uncovering Nevada's Past: A Primary Source History of the Silver State" (University of Nevada Press, 2004), "The Uniting States: The Story of Statehood for the Fifty United States," (Greenwood Press, 2004), and "Mining Nevada's Legal History: Going to the Sources, in Western Legal History: The Journal of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, vol. 20: 1 & 2," (2007).

He has degrees in history from the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State University, Mankato, and he has taken additional coursework at the University of Nevada, Reno. From 1979 to 1983, he was a research historian at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he wrote history textbooks, prepared educational materials for classrooms and taught teacher workshops.