(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for Wild Nevada Memories is provided by the William N. Pennington Foundation.

- [Woman] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed.

- [Man] Gail and John Sande III.

- [Woman] Margaret and Charles Burback.

- [Man] And by individual members.

- [Announcer] It's been 20 years since Wild Nevada first appeared on public television.

Over the years, many people have asked "what's it like to travel around and make the show?"

So let's celebrate the 20th anniversary by reliving one of our favorite adventures and sharing some Wild Nevada memories.

- Welcome to Wild Nevada I'm Chris Orr.

- And I'm Dave Santina.

And on today's program, we'll take you through some of the colorful and historic communities in north central Nevada.

- We'll visit a ghost towns of Unionville, Star City, and Santa Clara.

Beginning today, right here, in the very living community of one of Winnemucca.

- You're going to come along on a mountain biking excursion on the outskirts of town, on the ominously named, Bloody Shins Trail.

- Hopefully the trail won't be appropriately named today, though.

- Oh, if only you knew what was ahead of you.

- We're standing in front of the Winnemucca Hotel, now, this is the oldest building in town.

It was built in 1863, and reportedly it's the longest standing hotel in the state.

- Yeah, we thought this would be a great place to stay.

I didn't realize though, that it was a hotel literally in name only.

- It was old, and not necessarily had had a lot of maintenance in the last few years.

- The Basque restaurant was great.

The bar was great, on the first floor, but when we went upstairs to the rooms we did not realize what we were getting into.

No locks on the doors, the beds were ancient.

- He had to walk me back to my room 'cause doors didn't have locks, and so we were watching each other's backs.

- I actually put a chair under my doorknob.

- I had to, put like a chair, under my doorknob that night, and I didn't have any curtains.

So I had to crouch down on the floor to change my clothes, and so that way people couldn't see in the windows.

- A shared bathroom, down the hall for everybody.

You're taking a shower, hoping that nobody wonders in while you're in the shower, 'cause there's no lock on the door.

- But hey, we spend the night.

It was an adventure in itself.

- And the building's gone now, and I think I understand why.

- We had forgotten an important piece of equipment.

And so after we realized that JR and I piled in the car, and we drove all the way back to Reno to get what we were missing, spent the night we arrived, like spent the night, and then drove back early in the morning.

- Jack and JR come back and I'm thinking, did they really forget those things?

Or did they just not want to stay in that hotel?

- This building that we're coming to, was the old George Nixon bank.

And this is a bank that, supposedly, Butch Cassidy and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang robbed in 1900.

- [Dave] Really?

- It certainly was robbed, but it's a question as to whether Butch Cassidy was actually here.

- [Kay] This is the courthouse, of course, built in 1920.

And it was at a cost of $150,000, which angered the people of Lovelock, because they were in Humboldt County at the time, and they succeeded and had their own county, which of course now is Pershing County and Frank DeLongchamps who was the architect here, also was the architect for the new courthouse in Pershing County of Lovelock.

- [Dave] So they got their own courthouse.

(Kay laughing) - They did.

- [Dave] So there!

(Dave laughing) - [Kay] We're here in upper town Winnemucca.

As it was known in those days, or Lanterntown.

- [Chris] Now, why Lanterntown?

- [Kay] The upper town had the money to purchase street lamps, which were lit by lanterns and encased in glass.

- [Chris] Oh, okay.

- [Kay] Lower town didn't have the money for that sort of thing.

So these people had one up on everyone else.

This is Saint Paul's Catholic church.

This was built in 1924 and an architect from San Francisco by the name of Jolly, I believe it was, came and designed the church.

- I remember Jack running into the church to get as much footage as he could, and then ran back out because we were trying to do a lot in a short time, 'cause you can see the clouds, we weren't sure if we were going to get rained on.

- [Chris] This is a really colorful building.

- [Kay] This is the Record home.

William Record came from Maine with his two brothers, to come out West and do some prospecting.

But when he built this house, it was the first house in this area, bringing the residential area out this way from the Winnemucca Hotel.

And so this house, had to have been one of the most splendid things to appear here, and probably frightened the natives terribly.

(all laughing) - [Chris] It's still incredibly splendid.

- [Kay] Isn't it beautiful?

- [Chris] Yeah.

- [Chris] What bridge are we on?

- [Kay] Well, this is the original Winnemucca Bridge, or French Ford Bridge.

It was built in 1910, but prior to that, there was a wooden bridge right down here.

And it was a toll bridge.

That's where the wagons crossed to the oxcarts and the horse traffic, everything.

- [Chris] Now why would a person pay a toll to cross the river, not just go and do it on their own?

- Because it's deeper than it looks, and it's very muddy and soft-bottom, and the carts would get stuck, or wagons would be stuck.

And it would take days and days to get a wagon train across here.

- Yeah, I'd pay rather than get muddied up.

- [Kay] This bridge is in excellent condition.

And it withstood the last flood when the bridge over there was washed out.

And we need to fix the top part of the bridge, and make it aesthetically pretty again.

So, we would like to save this bridge.

- [Dave] We thank Kay for sharing the history of Winnemucca with us.

Now it's time for me to strap on a helmet and gloves and hit the Bloody Shins Trail.

- It's a sunny day, all of a sudden because this actually happened weeks later.

- [Dave] To reach the Water Canyon link with the Bloody Shins Trails.

We take East Winnemucca Boulevard to Highland Drive, then south to Water Canyon Road, and follow the creek south about two miles to the trail head.

- The Bloody Shins Trail, another biking moment for Chris.

And unfortunately it was not a good biking moment.

- [Barb] You ready?

- [Dave] Barb Keleher, a BLM recreation planner will lead me on today's ride.

- So the reason why you don't see me in this segment of the bike ride is because, we had all gone out and ridden this trail together.

I crashed and I didn't just crash.

I wiped out.

(Chris laughing) I decided to break my fall with my chin and chest.

- We find out later that all the tape is bad and we can't use any of it.

So she smashed her face for nothing, which is terrible.

I went looking for some of these old raw tapes and I found the tape from the day we shot the bike segment with Chris.

It was on only one tape and it was all damaged.

Everything played badly, but you could see little clips.

- I have to say, I'm a little dubious about this name.

The Bloody Shins Trail makes me a little nervous.

Is this an omen about what we're to expect?

(Chris laughing) - We take our bikes down.

We go through the fence.

We're riding, Chris falls one time, on her own, just riding along but that's not the fall that we're talking about.

Later, we're coming down a little bit of a decline and you see Chris just start to go down, and the video freezes because the tape was damaged.

That's all you see is the beginning of her falling.

And then suddenly we snapped to her sitting on the ground.

- So we have the first victim of the Bloody Shins Trail.

That would of course, be the beginning rider.

Here.

And I think I've got some new battle scars.

- Yeah.

- But you know, I think I'm ready to get back on.

I broke my helmet.

(Dave laughing) Should we continue down the road?

- [Dave] If you're game?

- Yeah, if you want?

- I'll just bring up the rear.

- Okay.

- I'll go a little slower than the two of you, how's that?

- My one claim to fame in that crash is: I did eventually finish the ride.

- [Chris] Oh, I want a horse really, really badly.

Much better on a horse.

- She powered through it.

She finished the ride.

- We made it!

- Cool ride you guys.

- That was great, this is the... - We survived.

- We actually finished the segment.

We come to the end point and we say, thank you to Barb.

And it feels like a normal segment.

And then as we're driving back to Reno, Chris starts to feel worse.

She starts having some, some breathing problems and it's scary.

- The other claim to fame for this episode, is it's to date, the only trip to the Emergency Room.

Luckily no broken bones.

- That was the end of the day, and the next day they figured out that the tape was no good.

So disappointing.

So now we still have to shoot a segment here on the bikes.

- I, at this point had been told "you're not going back on a bike."

(Chris laughing) - So I went back and did the segment without her.

And we didn't even acknowledge it.

That was the weird thing.

We could have said anything, but we just said nothing.

And I just appear with Barb, we ride, and then Chris reappears.

- Is that mostly downhill?

- Yeah, it is.

From Water Canyon, it's downhill all the way to Bloody Shins Trail head.

- What do you consider that as far as difficulty level?

- You know, it's rated as beginner but I'd say it's close to intermediate at sections.

- There's quite a few twists and turns, and downhills are a challenge, if you're not comfortable riding those breaks you have to be careful, don't you?

- Exactly.

Some people get nervous, and they hit the brakes really hard and they'll do an endo.

So I just feather the back brake.

- What valley is this out here?

- It's actually the start of Grass Valley, which heads south from here.

- Okay.

And then we see this, that's I-80 right?

And then a mountain range coming all the way back right where we came from.

- [Barb] Yep.

And that's the start of the Sonoma Range.

That's the north end up there.

- [Dave] Well, what's up ahead for us?

- Well, what we'll do is go down this little hill and around the bend, and it's a great single track for another half mile or so.

There's a bit of a side hill though.

So watch it.

And then we'll get on a dirt road.

(Dave laughing) - [Dave] You lead the way for that one.

- [Barb] Okay!

- Also, when I watched the show again and looking at it, I was thinking, how did we film that?

Because obviously there was, we didn't have a GoPro camera back in that day.

And we were filming the front wheel of the bicycle, and we were probably on bikes ourselves, just carrying our cameras with us and shooting.

'Cause we, there was a long trip, and we had to get both ahead of them and then behind them.

So we could see them, all of the shots, the transitions we did.

- They make it look easy.

(Chris laughing) They make it look a lot easier than I did.

- [Barb] Come on, girlfriend!

- She's so much better than I am.

I'm just trying to keep up.

- [Dave] The single track meets a dirt road, making the last portion of this trail wider, but full of challenging dips and ruts that command your attention all the way to the end of the trail.

(Dave exhaling) - This is it ?

- Yeah, this is it.

- Ah we made it!

- Bloody Shins Trail head.

- That's great.

- Yeah, good ride.

- What's this map up here?

- Oh, let me show you.

This is a map of the trail system.

- Okay.

- And we started here, in Water Canyon, and rode all the way through this four miles to the Bloody Shins Trail head.

- [Dave] Look at all the others.

- [Barb] Yeah, you can see there's the three loops.

The beginner's green, the intermediate's blue, and then the advanced is black.

The beginner's about seven, intermediate's about 11, and advanced is about 16 and a half.

- That looks like fun.

I'd like to come back and do some more of that sometime.

- Yeah definitely.

Give me a call, I'll go out with you.

- Let's go get back to the truck.

- Okay!

(soft music) - On the second half of the show, we went to the mining towns of Unionville, Star City, and Santa Clara.

And that was really a wonderful trip because we were learning so much about Nevada history.

And again, you see that boom and bust cycle that happens so much around there, but Unionville was still a maintained place because the folks who lived there, they did a great job, giving us that quick tour of Unionville and its history was fascinating.

- We had a lovely evening, here at the Old Pioneer Garden Country Inn And suddenly, I'm back in the show.

- Now, we come out of the room together; people probably think that was our room, and we stayed together.

People always think we stay together.

We didn't stay together.

- Jack was an early riser and he got a lot of great footage of this area while I was still snoozing.

I didn't even know this happened.

(upbeat music) - [Dave] Mitzi and Lew Jones have operated the Old Pioneer Garden Country Inn for years.

And Lew still gets up and milks the goats before breakfast.

I'm hoping to learn a new skill.

So Lew is going to teach me how to do it.

Just one here?

- All right.

- I'll try to be gentle with your red.

I got this side.

- Okay.

- Just this side though.

- Now, you know, get that whole thing in there before you start.

Okay?

- Right.

- Okay?

And keep it here and above.

- I thought I was doing exactly what Lew did.

I was, I was not.

- Hold it tight.

And once you've got in there, don't let it go back up.

- This teacher, you could sort of see he was like "no, no, don't let go, put it up, push it up".

And Dave, Dave was not successful.

- [Chris] After breakfast Mitzi takes us for a look at Unionville's past and present.

- [Dave] What, what are we standing in front of right here?

- [Mitzi] That's the old school house, used till 1955, I think.

- [Chris] And was it a one-room school house?

- [Mitzi] One room.

People still come here that have gone to school there.

- I think Mitzi's is still there.

I think as of today, she is 97.

Her son, David, runs the Inn, as I understand it.

- [Chris] Unionville began during the Civil War, and the town's construction reflected the conflict.

The lower portion of the town was commonly known as "Dixie" because the minors who sided with the Confederacy lived in that area.

Later, when most of the town's new residents were Union-backers, the name was changed.

- [Dave] Mining was the reason for Unionville's existence.

But once the town began, it grew to nearly a thousand people and had stores, hotels, a brewery, a newspaper, and of course, saloons.

After its peak, Unionville declined quickly, and it lost the county seat to Winnemucca in 1873.

- [Chris] Mitzi, this is one of the houses that are on your property?

- [Mitzi] Yes it is.

- Which one is this?

- This, we call this the Field House, because you have to walk through all those fields to get here.

- [Chris] What was it before you named it the Field House?

- [Mitzi] I guess you could call it Marvin Colin's house, but we didn't want to do that.

(Chris laughing) - If you want a place to go to just chill out and read all weekend at a book nook in a window with a beautiful view.

That's your place.

- This is the only living area we had.

So we had to enclose part of the porch to give people more room to expand.

- Oh I'm glad you did, look how gorgeous that is.

- This used to be a big outside porch.

- [Dave] Well you know, it really looks, it has the same feel as the rest of the house, which is probably more of a challenge than you would think.

- [Mitzi] And don't you like Lew's doors?

Look at those doors.

- [Dave] He built those?

- [Mitzi] He built those.

- [Dave] Wow!

They're beautiful.

- The woodwork was, and is, just gorgeous.

It's so pretty.

- [Dave] He's a really good goat milker by the way.

(all laughing) - [Mitzi] Of course.

- [Chris] Better than some.

- [Dave] He's a lot better than me.

He's a good teacher, I'm just a rotten student.

- [Chris] The creek that runs through the property is just lovely.

Has that always been there or did...?

- It's always been there.

- [Dave] Does it have a name?

- [Mitzi] Buena Vista, Buena Vista Creek.

- I had read that Sandra Bullock would stay there and loved the place.

She would go up with a group from Hollywood and all the time we were walking around, and looking in the building, and all the beautiful restoration that they've done.

All I was thinking about was, well, "Did Sandra Bullock sit in that chairs?"

"Did Sandra Bullock stay in that room?"

"Which room is Sandra Bullock's room?

I wanna know."

I never did find out.

- The Hadley house.

- So this is the house where Sam Clemens had his meal?

- That's right.

- [Dave] The Hadley house belonged to the town's blacksmith: Thomas Hadley, who lived here in the 1860s and '70s.

There wasn't much left of it before renovation, but now it's part of the Jones' bed and breakfast, and visitors find it to be a cozy and comfortable place.

- I'm hearing the words that we use while we're talking and it's lovely and charming, and it truly is all of that.

- It was misty that day.

You can see the glare of the wiped off water droplets on the lens there.

The cameras are trying to shoot all this different stuff.

And if you go outside and there's moisture in the air or you get sprayed by a sprinkler or something you have to deal with it.

- [Chris] Decorative antiques, adorn every room, courtesy of Mitzi.

The result is an atmosphere that feels authentic, welcoming, and inviting to all.

- [Dave] We thank Mitzi for her hospitality and move out for Star City.

To get to star city from Unionville, we backtrack to state route 400, turn left, and cover five miles to reach a state historic marker sign at the road to Star City.

- Yeah, Alan was there with a buddy, you see his buddy wave at us in the passenger seat.

- They liked to drink beer.

When we went out there to, Star City or Santa Clara, it was, the back of their truck, had tons of beer cans in it.

And it was quite interesting.

- [Alan] Well 1861 is when the mines were found, and probably this place was at its height during 1863 to '65.

And it was pretty much dead by 1870 but it lingered on till 1880 and after 1880 there was hardly anybody here.

- [Dave] What was this area?

- Well, the main central area here was a plaza, it was triangular, which is unique as far as I know, for mining towns.

They had buildings built on each side of it.

There were hotels at either end of the bottom here with a back to the creek.

And there was a big hotel up over here, the Star Hotel.

- [Chris] Now when you say a plaza, are you're talking like a town square?

- [Alan] It was like a town square, except it was a town triangle thing, in this case.

- Now we're walking along, what was, was this a main drag in Star City?

- Well, the main drag was really the apex of the triangle there, from the Plaza and coming up here, I'm sure there were buildings lining both sides of it but it doesn't go anywhere.

- [Dave] Ah okay.

- It comes to a dead end up here.

- So the canyon is actually fairly tight for a city.

So, was access and transportation a problem for them?

- Well, it could never really hope to grow to a really big city because of its location.

- [Dave] Sure.

- [Alan] Well, we're coming up to the upper part of Star City.

You can see the roads are still wide enough for a few buildings.

And as we get here, we have the last best ruin of Star City.

- Sometimes there's so little left to show on camera to be able to help people visualize either the historic significance of the ghost town or that it is a ghost town destination.

All of our videographers do such a great job of really finding what makes those locations unique, regardless of how little is left.

- They built out of stone, there are people that knew how to build out of stone.

- [Dave] Did they have a lot of immigrant workers building buildings, like Unionville?

- [Alan] No, I think the miners built them, themselves.

- [Dave] The big producer of Star City's mines was called the Sheba.

Alan leads us up the road to take a look at her.

We're going to hike up.

I don't think many vehicles would make it up this road these days.

- [Alan] Here's the opening of the Sheba.

- [Dave] It looks like a, it looks like a cave.

- [Alan] Certainly does.

- [Chris] What was the significance of this mine to the town?

- This was the main mine, it produced.

Well, nobody really knows how much it produced because they didn't keep very accurate records back then.

Wells Fargo might have had information about how much they ship, but I don't know if they still have those records.

I haven't been able to find them.

- I understand why people are attracted to those big, those big holes and want to go check out these old mines.

And it's just so, so dangerous, but I totally get it because I see that and I want to go up and look at it.

But we never do.

- [Chris] Then it's off road again, as we take a grueling, and often treacherous three mile ride to Santa Clara.

Make no mistake, as rewarding as this side trip is, only a high clearance four-wheel drive vehicle should attempt this road.

- As so often happens, you'll see us getting out of our guide's vehicle and that's because of course the minivan would not have made a high clearance road.

(Chris laughing) - Well, it was never really a very important mining camp, but what really distinguishes it, is you can't get there very easily.

(all laughing) It's the only one that doesn't have a road up to it.

And if you really want to see something, that most people have never seen, this is a good place to try.

- [Dave] This doesn't seem like a path that would lead to a town of any kind, but it is an enjoyable hike.

- [Chris] How many people lived up here?

- [Alan] Oh, probably only 80 or a hundred at most.

- This is where I was feeling it.

And Jack was doing all this with this really bad pulled muscle in his back and he felt horrible, and he just toughed it out.

- [Dave] Oh, Hey, look ahead.

- [Alan] Oh, wow.

Yes.

We're here.

- [Chris] There it is.

- [Dave] Looks like there's plenty of remains.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- [Chris] It's surprising just how many buildings are still up here.

They seem to go all the way up the canyon.

In fact, there are more standing structures here than there are stories about Santa Clara.

Not much is known about the town, except for a few reports of weddings and shootings.

A few mines operated nearby but like Star City they faded quickly.

- Well now Alan, Chris and I were roaming around down here but we saw you going up and down the canyon, looking at everything.

I wonder, how has this area changed since you were last here?

- They had a fire come through here since I was last here.

When I was first here, there was sage brush three-four feet high.

And you could hardly even see the rock walls here.

With the fire gone, you can see the quite stark contrast.

And it's very photogenic.

- [Chris] There's a lot of ruins up here.

Why do you think there's so many up here?

- [Alan] Well largely because it's so inaccessible and because rock doesn't burn and once the rock wall is there it tends to stay there unless there's a reason for it to fall down.

- Yeah, tell that to the rock wall in my backyard, which fell down all by itself.

I'm still bitter about it.

- We'd better try to trek back down before we lose our light?

- Okay, let's do it.

- Somehow, I had pulled a muscle in my back.

And we were doing all this filming, hiking and doing all this filming.

And it was steadily getting more painful as we, as the day went on.

And I just remember at the last end, when they were sort of like walking away, I was just like, (Jack exhaling) it's finally over.

- Jack just laid the ground, in exhaustion and just, utter back pain.

And it was, just a testament to him that he powered through this trip - Until our next Wild Nevada adventure.

You get out there and enjoy our beautiful state for yourself.

- Jack gets the hero award for this day.

Chris gets the hero award for that day later when she smashed her face.

- Why was it so important to cross the river at this point?

I understand that this was where you did it.

- They have to get to the other side, Chris.

(all laughing) - I had forgotten that moment.

- Thanks for watching this one with us.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, and we'll do it again.

- That's the same spot I lost it last time.

- [Announcer] Support for Wild Nevada memories is provided by the William N. Pennington Foundation.

- [Woman] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed.

- [Man] Gail and John Sande III.

- [Woman] Margaret and Charles Burbank.

- [Man] And by individual members.

(upbeat music)