Columnist Susan Snyder: Austin folks put new spin on the old

Monday, Sept. 15, 2003 | 8:06 a.m.

Joy Brandt carefully turned the key that unlocked the sanctuary of St. George's Episcopal Church in Austin.

She showed off the 19th-century pipe organ next to the altar. It still sings on Sundays, powered by canvas bellows tucked behind it.

"They're electrified now," Brandt said. "But we used to pump them (by hand). All of us did it at one time or another."

She flipped the switch that supplies electricity to pump the bellows and played a chord that called out joyfully to the rafters. Brandt, now in her 70s, grew up listening to this organ.

"My mom and dad were members. My husband and I were married here. All my kids were baptized here," she said.

Hopefully, a whole lot of people Brandt doesn't even know will want to stop in and see the church simply because it is one of 10 buildings in this old Nevada silver-mining town that recently were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The buildings, dating from the 1860s and '70s, represent the silver-boom era in Austin, which sits on U.S. 50, smack-dab in the middle of Nevada. That's 330 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Austin now has about 280 residents and barely any work beyond the usual government services. Members of the Austin Historical Society hope historic register status will boost tourism and bring an economic revival.

"We're trying to get people to come out of Las Vegas to see the history here, rather than having them take the history to Las Vegas and bring people there to see it," Ray Williams, a society member, said. "That's why we formed the historical society here -- to protect what was left."

He was referring to one of Austin's old mercantile buildings, which sat on the Strip for nearly a decade in Robert "Dobie Doc" Caudill's Last Frontier Village. Caudill, a Benny Binion associate, stocked his 1950s-era attraction with old buildings toted away from rural Nevada towns.

Three of the buildings, including a jail lifted from Tuscarora, are now at the Clark County Heritage Museum in Henderson. But the one from Austin isn't among them.

Still, Austin boasts a large number of mid-19th century buildings largely untouched by anything except time and elements.

"It's kind of the whole town," said Mella Harmon, the state historian who oversees the listing of sites on the National Register.

The recent additions bring to 11 the number of Austin buildings on the register. An elementary school listed about three years ago was the first to acquire the designation. But 10 at one time is a hefty listing, especially in a town with fewer than 300 residents, Harmon said.

"It seems to me the most at one shot that have ever been listed in Nevada," Harmon said. "It is sort of a cumbersome process."

Amen to that, Ray Salisbury, historical society president, said. He recalled the day board members traveled to Reno to bid on a federal Community Development Block Grant. That $20,000 eventually paid for the historical architecture consultant and other costs of applying for the register listing.

"People were asking for firetrucks and generators. We just thought we didn't have too much of a chance," Salisbury said. "You've got only so much time, and then you're out of there."

Whatever they said worked. The new listings even include the cemetery east of town. Cemeteries are almost never included on the register, Harmon said, especially ones that still have room for more ... well, you know.

But most of the graves pre-date 1900 -- many by as much as 70 years. So it strongly represents a specific period of the town's history. That period includes the peak years during the 1880s, when Austin boasted a population of 10,000.

"This was a High Victorian town. They had fresh oysters from Boston and Parisian fashions actually from Paris," Jan Morrison, owner of Austin's Main Street Shops.

Morrison sold real estate in the Las Vegas Valley before moving to Austin this past summer. In addition to the old shop on Main Street, Morrison also purchased St. Augustine's Catholic Church, which is among the 10 national register buildings. And she lives in a house built in 1863 -- one that had no indoor plumbing or electricity when she moved in last July.

"I just fell in love with the place," Morrison said. "This is history in the raw. And look at that view. Do you see any air pollution?"

Those who currently live in Austin hope the town built by those who have passed away will attract tourists and their business. Even without historic markers, travelers from Oregon and Arizona stopped to explore the old structures last week.

"I'm obsessive about seeing all the old buildings," Joan Groff, of Tucson, Ariz., said. "I think I'll spend the rest of the day walking around downtown and leave tomorrow."