Second Biennial Report
Nevada Historical Society
1909-1910
Excerpts from: Truckee Meadow Memoirs
by Rev. F. M. Willis, Pioneer Nevada Missionary
I was on the side of Reno fourteen years before that pros-
perous town was laid out. In the month of August, 1853, we
camped on the banks of the Truckee, a few miles below where
Wadsworth now stands. Our train consisting of nine wagons,
two or three hundred head of horses and mules, and seven
hundred and fifty head of cattle, was all driven and
managed by forty-five men. All the way down the Humboldt
the water had been exceedingly bad, and you can imagine how
refreshing it was, after crossing the forty-mile desert, to
have a drink from the beautiful Truckee and a plunge into
its waters.
We rested there for a few days, and then moved up to the
Truckee Meadows, about five miles below the present town of
Reno. Such a grand sight for hungry cattle and horses!
Thousands of acres of blue joint grass lay all around us.
About the twenty-ninth of August we moved up to the foot of
the mountains, just north of where Verdi now stands, having
crossed the Truckee thirteen times. Nevada climate was as
freaky in those days as it is now, for there came up a north
wind and the night of the twenty-ninth thick ice froze in
our wash basins. But we were soon camped on the other side
of the Sierras in balmy California.
In the year 1863 I was appointed pastor of the Truckee
circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. From California
I rode a little black pony all the way from Sonoma County,
California, to Nevada by way of the Placerville route. Ten
years had passed since I had camped on the Meadows. The
Comstock Lode had been discovered, and had proved to be one
of the richest gold and silver ore bodies ever known. The
country at first was called Washoe, everywhere in California
it was "Ho for Washoe."
All the immigrants came in either by stage or private con-
veyance, or on foot.
Joan