View from the Past

100 Years Ago

Hear the Christmas Carols…the high school chorus of about 25 girls will sing the old Christmas carols from the belfry of the high school building Sunday evening…A crew of men, under direction of Nevada Valleys Power Company, is at present busied in the construction of a road from Hazen to Lahontan…This is a good time to start that hotel that we have been talking about this long time. We have just had a good year, the prospects for the coming year are even better, and there is little doubt but what there are prosperous times ahead for several years to come.

Churchill County Eagle, Saturday, December 23, 1916

75 Years Ago

Tonight at 8 o’clock the total blackout will be announced by a one-minute blast of the fire siren. Motorists will be required to stop their cars, extinguish all lights, and they will not be allowed to move until another one-minute signal, thirty minutes later, ends the period of total blackout. All lights must be out, it is announced. Window shades which permit a glow to filter through will not be adequate. Lights in the back of stores visible from the street should be extinguished The city stop-and-go street lights will be out. Telephones should not be used unless necessary during blackouts. The Fallon Standard, Wednesday, December 17, 1941

Gift ideas for the home and the homemaker-here’s something new: RCA-Victor radio, RCA-Victrola combination radio and phonograph, Bell & Howell movie cameras and Hotpoint refrigerators and ranges. Fran Woodliff & Son. The Fallon Standard, December 17, 1941

50 Years Ago

Mrs. Gladys (Harold) Hurd received a Christmas letter from Mrs. Grace Small, known throughout this country and Europe as the “Walking Grandmother.” Mrs. Small was in Fallon in early July and the Eagle-Standard carried a front page article about her. The Christmas letter carried colored markings indicating her trips during 1936. She literally walked from coast to coast and north to south. Although she makes several trips a year, each trip begins and ends in her home town of Eugene, Oregon.

Fallon Eagle-Standard, Tuesday, December 20, 1966

Nature’s quick change artist — snow — dazzles the eye, delights farmers, inspires poets, and unnerves suburbanites. Snow is generally formed by water vapor that crystalizes directly into ice from gas without becoming liquid, the National Geographic Society says. The designs can be austerely simple or fantastically complex. The ancient Chinese poet-scholar Han Ying observed: “Most of the flowers have five petals but only snowflakes have six.” On a clear, crisp day, the jumbled ice crystals in new fallen snow produce a dazzling light. Acting as prisms, the crystals bend light to produce all the colors of the spectrum. Every state, including Hawaii, gets some snow. In the agricultural west, a deep snowfall is like white gold, providing water for irrigating, drinking and power. Fallon Eagle-Standard, Tuesday, December 20, 1966

View From The Past…stories from the Churchill County Museum & Archives, researched and compiled by Margo Weldy, Churchill County Museum Assistant.