Lovelock, Nevada
Home of the Lovelock Tribune
1920, Pershing Co. High School |
1900 |
1935 |
1908 |
1895 |
Rochester Mine near Lovelock c1910 |
1935 |
Sue Family, 1912 |
1906 |
1935 |
Lovelock Tribune (sn 86091313)
Lovelock, like other towns across northern Nevada, began as a rest stop near the terminus of the Humboldt River on the overland trail to California. The valley of the Humboldt River provided lush pasture and water for cattle, horses, oxen, and people before they headed west across the dreaded 40 Mile Desert. A few homesteaders settled in the valley to harvest the wild rye and cut and sell the alfalfa for hay. The town took its name from George Lovelock, an English settler who had traveled into Nevada from California after the Civil War and bought up some 320 acres and the water rights in the Humboldt Valley from the local resident squatters. A town was laid out when the Central Pacific Railroad passed through and George Lovelock donated 85 acres for the site for a depot, which became known as “Lovelock’s Deport”. Lovelock diversified his interests, discovered mineral deposits in the surrounding areas, became the town’s first postmaster, and became the proprietor of the Big Meadows Hotel adjacent to the railroad station. By 1900 Lovelock was a bustling town with a school, churches, and a business district along Railroad Street. And the town supported no fewer than three weekly newspapers.
The Lovelock Tribune was the first Lovelock newspaper, established in 1898 by S.R. Young and George W. Peltier, incorporated as the Lovelock Publishing Company, with Charles McKnight Sain as editor and manager. Sain removed to Virginia City in 1902 where, the Reno Gazette (sn 82007252) reported, “One Charles McKinight Sain of malodorous political, mining and journalistic record is at present editing a blackmailing Stewart organ in Virginia City. It is known as “Campaign Notes.” In 1905 the Lovelock Argus (sn 86076296) owned and edited by the Riddle family since 1900 consolidated with the Tribune. Howard W. Cherry took over the paper in 1907, joined in 1908 by George Riddle. Cherry left the Tribune to start his own paper the Review, in neighboring Vernon (sn 86076405), which he then moved to Lovelock (sn86076365). John S. Case took over the Tribune in 1908. Case, originally from Winnemucca, graduated from the State University of Nevada and with one of his classmates leased the Winnemucca Silver State (sn 86076224) newspaper as managers and editors. When the downstate Tonopah Bonanza (sn 86076142) noted his wedding in 1910, Case was referred to as “one of the well-known newspapermen in the state.” He represented the Lovelock Tribune at the organizational meeting of the Nevada Editorial Association in Reno in 1911, for which he served on the executive committee. He expanded the Tribune to a semi-weekly, but in February 1912 he suspended publication of the Tribune and moved briefly to the Lovelock Review-Miner (sn 86076998) before he gave up the newspaper business altogether and returned to Winnemucca, where a fellow editor reported in the Carson City Appeal (sn 86076241), “the former editor of the Lovelock Tribune will engage in the merchandising business in Paradise Valley, having forsaken the newspaper game. It is a hard game, John, and success to you in your new venture.”
Lovelock was incorporated in as a city 1917 and became the seat of the new Pershing County in 1919 when its famous round courthouse, designed by Frederick Joseph DeLongchamps, was built. Periodic mining activity, agriculture, and tourism sustain Lovelock to this day.
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1889, Assemblyman
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