History reflected in Reno’s old Fourth Street

Don Cox

Wednesday, May 3, 2000 | 10:29 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - As an army of census workers begin walking neighborhoods in Reno and Sparks, someone will likely stop at the home of Phoebe Edwards, who has lived in the same Victorian Avenue home in Sparks for 64 years.

At the other end of town, census takers also will drop by the Silver State Lodge on West Fourth Street, a collection of old cabins that once sheltered weary travelers but now house longer-term tenants.

The Edwards house and the Silver State are addresses on the census map. But they also are parts of the changing demographics and history of Reno and Sparks, located near opposite ends of a route that shapes the two communities and reflects their shifts in population, economics and lifestyles.

"You're dipping your toes into a cross-section of not only Nevada history, but of the whole western U.S.," Paul Starrs, a University of Nevada, Reno geography professor, said of the stretch of continuous pavement formed by Fourth Street and Victorian Avenue. "You are going on old U.S. 40."

Until the freeway bypass was completed in 1974, that segment of U.S. 40 was how to drive through the heart of Reno and Sparks. Motorists headed east and west now zip by on Interstate 80.

But the street remains. Much of it, almost 10 miles, runs from the long-vacant River Inn west of Reno to the entrance of Sierra Sid's 76 Total Travel Center on the east side of Sparks. In between is the past, present and future.

You've got new casinos and old motels. You've got bars and strip clubs. You've got Victorian Square in Sparks and the gambling center of Reno. You've got trailer parks and gas stations. You've got urban renewal and decay.

"It's a great cross-section of the cities," Starrs said. "It's got high end to the lowest end. It's a cross-section of human need. It's what these cities are all about. It's what any good city is all about. It's what the Truckee Meadows has been and what it's becoming."

You can see both in one place, the Silver State Lodge at 1791 West Fourth St. - close to the Keystone Avenue intersection where the Reno landscape changes from suburban to downtown.

The Silver State is one of the motels sprinkled along the U.S. 40 route, built for motorists who stopped in Reno and Sparks before or after crossing the Sierra. Its 18 log cabins opened in the mid-1920s. Long-term residents have replaced the long-distance travelers who used to stop.

"It's a weekly or a monthly," said Bob Colvin, who manages the place. "We don't do any overnight. It's not a motel, really."

That's one transition. Another will occur if Silver States owner, Luther Bostrack, is successful with his plan to build affordable housing on the property. Bostrack wants to build 190 condominiums of various sizes on the Silver State site for sale to lower-wage buyers who make 30 percent to 80 percent of the area's median family income.

The cabins, to be donated to a shelter for unwed mothers, were needed on U.S. 40 when it was a major highway. The road has changed. So has the need.

Edwards has seen the same process at her Sparks end of old U.S. 40, where she's lived since 1936. The Edwards house is one of the few single-family homes left on the Fourth Street-Victorian Avenue route.

"There used to be houses all around here," Edwards said. She remembers being able to see the huge roundhouse, where steam engines were repaired, when the railroad dominated downtown Sparks.

The roundhouse has been gone since the 1950s. The two hotel towers of John Ascuaga's Nugget are visible from Edwards' back yard. The casino, not the railroad, anchors the street.

Casinos also fill the landscape where old U.S. 40 runs through Reno's downtown core. Don Carano, who did a lot to create the city's new heart, remembers the old one.

"There were a lot of businesses on 40," said Carano, owner of the Eldorado Hotel Casino and co-owner of the Silver Legacy Resort Casino.

One of them was the family bakery where Carano swept floors as a kid. That bakery was on the block at Fourth and Virginia Streets where the Eldorado is located.

During U.S. 40's highway prime, the route was jammed with transcontinental traffic. Reno and Sparks were stopping points for motorists who had crossed the Nevada desert and were preparing for the next leg of their trip, over the Sierra, or for the motorists headed in the opposite direction, from mountains to desert.

"It was a staging area," Starrs said.

Maybe some of those tired drivers stayed at what is now Wildflower Village, four old motels on West Fourth that Pat Campbell-Cozzi bought in 1994 and renovated into longer-term residences.

"It's been a struggle," said Campbell-Cozzi, who has added an espresso bar to the property. "We're still in transition."

So are many other spots on the street.

East of downtown Reno, old Fourth Street institutions include Casales Halfway Club, which started as a fruit stand in 1937.

Casales used to be situated halfway between Reno and Sparks. Now it's in Reno. The city grew past it. The club is a bar-restaurant. It is also the house where Inez Stempeck, whose specialty is homemade ravioli, grew up.

"This was my brother's and my room and that was my mom and dad's room," said Stempeck, as she pointed to different areas of the restaurant.

Stempeck, who took over the operation in 1969, has lived all of her life on Fourth Street. She has seen all the transitions. She will see more.

"When they talk bad about Fourth Street, I get mad," Stempeck said. "I raised my kids on Fourth Street."

archive