Friday, April 22, 2005 | 4:17 a.m.
Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at [email protected] or (702) 259-4082.
WEEKEND EDITION
April 23 - 24, 2005
Psssst, buddy. Wanna buy a ghost town?
Longtime owners of Palisade are putting the town up for sale at 2 p.m. Tuesday in a live online auction by Greg Martin Auctions (www.gregmartinauctions.com). Look for Lot 2512. The company also has listed the auction notice on eBay.
Bids will start at $37,500.
But John Sexton -- whose family's ownership of Palisade is rooted in its 19th-century railroad heyday -- hopes to get at least $100,000 for the 160-acre tract along the Humboldt River 27 miles southwest of Elko.
His great-grandfather, also named John Sexton, was general manager of the Eureka and Palisade Railroad, a narrow gauge that operated between the two towns from 1875 to 1938. Sexton said his own father rode the train as a youngster when it made its last run in 1938.
Sexton, 50, said he was born in Las Vegas when "it wasn't even listed as one of the five biggest cities in Nevada." He lived here and in Battle Mountain before moving to Atlanta with his mother when he was still a youngster.
"When we lived in Battle Mountain, we'd make trips and have picnics out in Palisade," said Sexton, who now works as a buyer, seller and appraiser of Civil War-era firearms. "My big thrill was to find shiny rocks. I still have a couple at home. They were turquoise. I don't know whether they were natural or whether they planted them for me to find."
Palisade came into existence as the Central Pacific Railroad pushed the Transcontinental Railroad through Northern Nevada in late 1868, according to Guy Rocha, Nevada's state archivist and historian.
"It was a little railroad stop," Rocha said.
And its destiny to remain so was determined when Central Pacific officials chose Carlin 10 miles east as the division point where the turntables and maintenance roundhouse were built.
"Palisade ended up being in the shadow of Carlin," Rocha said.
U.S. Census figures show 39 people lived in Palisade in 1870, which increased to 211 10 years later. Population peaked at 312 in 1920, but dwindled to 186 by 1960. The 1970 Census doesn't even list Palisade, Rocha said.
Probably the biggest thing that didn't happen in Palisade was the attempted assassination of President Herbert Hoover, the historian said. Hoover was traveling to his hometown of Palo Alto, Calif., to vote in the November 1932 election (presumably for himself).
He stopped in Elko on Nov. 8 and made what would be his last national radio address as president. His continued journey was delayed because a security crew sent to check the rails ahead of the president's discovered saboteurs had rigged explosives to a bridge over the rails in Palisade, Rocha said.
Palisade, so-named for the sheer, cathedral-like canyon walls behind it, is a beautiful place, but one Sexton hasn't visited in more than 20 years.
The reason is one that has plagued Palisade's existence from the beginning.
"It's too far away," Sexton said. "It's nowhere near anything."
Bids may be submitted online, by telephone or live at the auction house in San Francsico. To register or for information call (800) 509-1988 or e-mail [email protected].
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