Reno, Nevada, has had an unconventional past. Nevada has sometimes been behind the times and sometimes ahead of them in defying conventional morality. The politicians who prevailed were consistently those who spurned hypocrisy and kept the economy strong by allowing activities that were illegal elsewhere: prizefighting, gambling, uncontested divorce. Reno, the largest city in the state until the late 1950s, took advantage of the lax political environment to become an urban playground. But Reno was also the home of ordinary people—merchants, railroad workers, university students and professors, families. The city’s two cultures rarely intersected. With a selection of fine historic images from her best-selling book, Historic Photos of Reno, Donnelyn Curtis provides a valuable and revealing historical retrospective on the growth and development of Reno. Remembering Reno captures the flavor of both sides of the city’s personality. Included are images of the businesses, the buildings, and the main events that marked the rise of the “Biggest Little City in the World.� Some of the photographs also capture the beauty of the natural environment in which Reno is situated. In stunning black-and-white photography, this handsome book offers a compelling look into Reno’s past that will appeal to newcomers and longtime residents alike.

Reno was first known as a mid-nineteenth century mining town, owing to Nevada’s ample supply of silver and gold. Over the next hundred years, the city became an urban playground, notorious for a lax political environment that encouraged unconventional activities such as prizefighting, gambling, and uncontested divorce. Historic Photos of Reno tells the story of Reno’s development through nearly 200 archival black-and-white photographs. Author Donneyln Curtis transports the reader through the city’s history, illustrating how a sleepy mining community grew into the "biggest Little City in the World.�

The discovery and mining of the Comstock Lode in Nevada forever changed the mining culture of the American West. Using the pen name Dan De Quille, in 1876 William Wright published "The Big Bonanza," the best-known contemporary account of the Comstock Lode mines. Previously, however, in nearly fifty newspaper accounts from 1860 to 1863, De Quille had documented the development of the early Comstock with a frankness, abundance of detail, sense of immediacy, and excitement largely absent from his book. Donnelyn Curtis and Lawrence I. Berkove have gathered those accounts for the first time in "Before" The Big Bonanza.

De Quille describes the amazing transformation of the Comstock in less than four years from miscellaneous tent camps and primitive mining sites to an incredible complex of underground shafts and tunnels beneath a group of wealth-producing cities, with modern buildings, state-of-the-art mills, orderly streets, and traffic jams. He captures the vitality of the inhabitants' resolution and resourcefulness as they survive destructive storms and being cut off from supplies and entertainment, and he chronicles the events that kept Nevada and California in the Union. While reporting the prevailing violence of brawling and dueling and anti-Indian prejudice, De Quille at the same time conveys his thoughtful observations on the significance to democracy and civilization of the existence of such license.

This trove of columns, collected from a variety of newspapers, is history in the making and additionally casts new light on the life and rapidly developing art of De Quille, the biographer of the Comstock and one of the most versatile and accomplished authors of the Old West.