The Truckee River

Flowing out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west, the Truckee River is Reno’s most striking natural and historical feature. Near the river, Chinatown was inhabited by the city’s oriental population from 1869 to around 1920; the Reno Gas Works, established in 1878, produced illuminating gas for Reno through 1890; and the Alhambra, a former gristmill that later became a saloon and lodging house, housed Reno’s first school in the fall of 1868 and early clergymen’s services. The Lake House, a way station founded by Myron C. Lake in 1862, later developed into the Riverside Hotel, and Lake donated land for a depot and townsite when the Central Pacific Railroad came through the Truckee Canyon; he is considered the Father of Reno. Lake’s Toll Bridge served as the main crossing of the Truckee River on the Honey Lake Toll Road from 1862 to 1877, the first Washoe County courthouse was built after Reno became the county seat in 1871, Belle Isle became a community cultural and recreational center after an amusement park and dance pavilion were built there in 1911 and was donated by George Wingfield to the city as a park site in 1920, Eugene Ely made one of Reno’s earliest exhibition flights there on July 4, 1911, and the old Virginia and Truckee Railroad Bridge, constructed in 1871, linked Reno with Carson City and the Comstock Lode as part of the V and T Shortline Railroad.

Reno, Nevada · United States