Closed Nevada prison placed on register of historic places
CARSON CITY — The shuttered Nevada State Prison, which started as a territorial prison before Nevada statehood in 1864, was listed Friday on the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service.
The prison is one of Nevada's oldest state institutions, established in 1862 in Carson City as the Nevada Territorial Prison. It was one of the earliest symbols of Nevada's growing status in the mid-19th century.
Background provided by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources says that although it was rebuilt several times since 1862, the prison reflects a century and a half of use, during which the state administered a correctional system largely based on models intended to rehabilitate prisoners for a return to public life.
The prison's campus began as a small resort established by Abraham Curry in 1861 east of Carson City along Warm Springs Road. Curry's Warm Springs Hotel became the first territorial prison until 1864, when Curry sold the site and Nevada became a state.
For the remainder of the 1800s, the state prison underwent many changes because of fires and growing number of inmates. Some of the prison's most famous features unfortunately no longer remain. The infamous sloth footprints discovered in 1882 and considered at first by 19th century zoologists to be from early humans brought international attention from researchers and tourists alike. But, citing safety concerns, the state in the early 1990s filled in the tunnels that revealed the sloth footprints.
On Feb. 8, 1924, Nevada became the first state to execute a convict using gas at the prison, considered at the time to be a less cruel form of capital punishment.
The prison remained open for the remainder of the 20th century, only closing in 2012 as a budget reduction measure. In 2015, the Nevada Legislature passed Assembly Bill 377 which established provisions to preserve the prison for cultural uses.
Contact Sean Whaley at swhaley@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3900. Find him on Twitter: @seanw801.
