Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels: Carson City Chamber of Commerce celebrates 70 years in style

The Nevada Appeal’s Silver Dollars & Wooden Nickels feature recognizes achievements from the capital region and, when warranted, points out other acts that missed the mark.

SILVER DOLLAR: To the Carson City Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber celebrated its 70th anniversary with a first-of-its-kind affair inside the decommissioned Nevada State Prison on Monday. About 400 attended the Chamber’s annual meeting, barbecue and witnessed a concert by Lacy J. Dalton in the prison yard. NSP, the third oldest prison west of the Mississippi, was built in 1862 on the sandstone quarry once owned by Abraham Curry. The prison was decommissioned in 2012. Since then the Nevada State Prison Preservation Society has been working to preserve the prison and its artifacts — such as sloth footprints from about 1880. The NSPPS believes it can become a visitor attraction for Carson City or a movie site. And it is on its way after the Legislature approved bills during the last session to start turning NSP into a museum. For more information on NSPPS visit www.nspps.org.

SILVER DOLLAR: To the Good Samaritans who helped Gitta Peyerl when she recently had her purse stolen from the Market Street Walmart. The 86-year-old had her purse stolen, but the Walmart security and management teams along with the Carson City Sheriff’s Office were able to arrest the alleged thief. A few community residents helped pay for her groceries that day. This is the kind of story that makes us Carson proud. Thank you to all of those involved. For more on Peyerl’s story see page A19.