Monday, March 14, 2005 | 8:09 a.m.
Spring fever is hitting hard now.
Or is that hay fever?
It's both at our house. The morning sneeze-and-hacking fest is followed by a strong urge to ignore spring cleaning and get out of town.
Of course, most seasons give me the urge to get out of town (and a handful of Henderson residents who opposed the transit station there would help me pack).
Where to? Sparks. It turns 100 this year just like Las Vegas. Both cities emerged because of a railroad company's decision about where to send in the trains. (They sent in the clowns later. Some of them still hold office in Las Vegas.)
Sparks was swampy swath of land less than five miles east of Reno when the Southern Pacific Railroad replaced the Central Pacific as Northern Nevada's main line, according to the account posted at www.Sparks100.org.
Southern Pacific officials soon cut a few miles from the route, bypassing the main roundhouse and maintenance shops in Wadsworth to the north, ending a 40-year business.
No word on how or whether Wadsworth residents celebrate this event. But Sparks' festivities kick off with a ceremony at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the town's heritage museum. A fireworks show is Thursday in the city's new Victorian Square district.
Before hitting Sparks -- or any Nevada hot spot-- it's not a bad idea to peruse the list of Nevada myths compiled by Guy Rocha, Nevada's state archivist (www.dmla.clan.lib.nv.us). As usual, Rocha has an odd twist to the tale about Nevada Gov. John Sparks, for whom the town was named.
"The circumstances surrounding his demise have become so distorted with the passage of time that they can only be described as fanciful and maudlin," Rocha writes in an essay posted on his historical myths Web page.
Sparks was a Democrat who was highly supported by organized labor, Rocha says. However, in 1907, during a miners' labor dispute in Goldfield, Sparks sided with the mine owners rather than the union.
The situation grew ugly, and Sparks called in federal troops to monitor a strike by miners who weren't being paid. Then he had to create a special state police force to replace the federal troops that were recalled because President Theodore Roosevelt felt "he had been duped," Rocha says.
The long-held legend is that Sparks, who suffered from a kidney disorder, then made a 400-mile roundtrip to Goldfield by horseback to settle the matter. Truth is, Rocha said, Sparks died May 22, 1908, from an illness that his attending physician says was caused by exposure to cold December air during an open-air automobile trip from Carson City to Reno.
The aggravated illness, coupled with stress from the Goldfield situation, proved too much for the 66-year-old politician, Rocha's essay says. Ultimately, the old guy may have "died of a broken heart."
"However, we can be sure that a round-trip from the state capital to Reno by car in the chill air of early December, and not a horseback ride to Goldfield of epic proportions, shattered his health," Rocha writes.
If you can't get out of town in time for the fireworks, Sparks is hosting a turn-of-the-century fair and parade in June. By then, it should be hotter down here than any of us can stand.
And any season is the right time for a trip.
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