From six-shooters to squad cars, Washoe County sheriff collects history

Tuesday, June 1, 1999 | 2:09 a.m.

"How tough a job it was back then," Lt. Doug Gist said. He recalls a story of an undersheriff who rode his horse through the night in 1872 to arrest a man who robbed a train in Verdi.

"They had no cars with air conditioning, no flashlights, no radios. They did it by themselves."

Fifteen years ago, Gist decided to take on the task of gathering the facts, photos and stories that make up the sheriff office's colorful history. He had to start digging from scratch, battling an office tradition of out with the old, in with the new.

"I guess each new sheriff didn't want to be reminded of the past administration," Gist said. "We had nothing."

He approached then-Sheriff Vince Swinney about starting a history collection.

"I think it's important for a department to know where we've come from and what we've been before we decide where to go in the future," Swinney said while surveying the Gist's display in the jail lobby.

Gist began to look for anything tied with the sheriff's office. He has collected artifacts, such as badges and whistles, combed past newspapers starting 1861 for photographs of past sheriff's and contacted the office's "old-timers," a source he said is drying up.

He has stories of badges that have stopped bullets from entering a deputy's heart and gun fights that have left both criminals and lawmen lying dead in the street.

One of Sheriff Richard Kirkland's favorite stories is of a past sheriff who held a train hostage for 10 days in Lake's Crossing (a town now known as Reno) until the railroad paid the county a tax.

"Out of pure frustration the railroad folks sent $100 bucks to the county," Kirkland said. "Totally illegal. There is a great history here."