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| Entrance to the Historical Museum in Searchlight, Nevada |
As I have mentioned numerous times in my columns, museums have a special place in my heart and I try to visit as many as I can whilst out and about on traveling adventures.
Again, as I have also mentioned numerous times in my columns, our children used to roll their eyes, harrumph, or feign illness whenever I turned into the parking lot of some vault of historical value - namely a museum.
Laureen, my lovely traveling partner, and I tried to instill an appreciation of history and the stories of those who came before us and who made wherever we happened to be traveling what it is today.
It did not matter if it was Amboy, Bullhead City, Randsburg, London, or Paris - each place has a special story to be heard and appreciated.
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| The iconic ghost town of Amboy, California |
George Santayana, the philosopher is given credit for penning the immortal phrase: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
I am the perfect example of Santayana’s statement. How many times Laureen has reminded me that a small taste of Mrs. Renfro’s Carolina Reaper Salsa didn't sit well with me in the past? I generally remember while being rushed to the emergency room by a team of paramedics.
But I digress.
Recently, our daughter Kelly let us know that she was taking our grandson, Eli, to a children’s museum in their town of Meridian, Idaho.
We smiled over the video call but once disconnected, high-fived each other. “It worked,” we stated in unison.
According to Rebecca Carlsson in her article for MuseumNext, published on September 15, 2023, ‘Museums have the power to create unity of both a social and political level and a local one. Local museums can provide a sense of community and place by celebrating a collective heritage, offering a great way to learn about the history of a particular area.’
Carlsson ends her piece with ‘Museums are just as crucial to the future as the future is to museums. Not only can our museums bring history to life, but they can also shine a light on our present and future - a light which can be hard to find elsewhere.’
Great article and a must-read for parents - in addition to my own columns, obviously - to instill a sense of who we are not only as a country, state, or city, but who we are as a whole.
Sometimes those visits may conjure up images we may not want to recall.
It is hard for most right-minded people not to get teared up while visiting the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, or walking the acres of land containing Manzanar along Highway 395. Those are gut-wrenching places to wander but at the same time, as Santayana hoped, if we remember the past we may not let those things happen again.
Perhaps the philosopher was not as skeptical of the human condition as many are today.
But I digress.
With my admiration of museums, I visited the small but extremely informative historical center of Searchlight, Nevada.
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| Searchlight in the bygone days |
I wrote about the once bustling mining town during the dark years of the pandemic when I was not able to enter the museum with the mask restrictions, social distancing, and COVID bugs flying non-stop creating havoc, so I made it a point to revisit.
The museum is located in Clark County within the Searchlight Community Center along Cottonwood Cove Road which ultimately leads to the Cottonwood Cove Recreation area on Lake Mohave.
In 1897 a miner by the name of George Frederick Colton was looking for gold in the area when he supposedly said, “It would take a searchlight to find gold ore here.”
Well, gold was found, and thus the name for find, Searchlight Mine, and in 1898 the name of the newly founded gold rush town.
Today, there is not much to view in the town, more of a crossing spot for those traveling to the blue waters at Cottonwood Cove or on their way to Las Vegas along Interstate 95. A casino or two, a gas station or two, and a few places to grab a meal - but the museum is a must-stop since it holds some very interesting pieces of information explaining why the town of Searchlight is a truly hidden treasure of history.
Let us put away the mining history, important as it may be for making a desolate desert landscape come alive with untold riches, but concentrate on who was once involved in this town of now only 278 humans that was once home to nearly 2,000 souls.
As I wandered around the well-displayed kiosks in the museum I was amazed at the photographs, newspaper clippings, tools, books, and other artifacts which made this stop so much worth anyone’s time.
I did not know that John Macready once lived in Searchlight where his father once owned a very rich ore-producing mine. Macready was a famous pilot in the early years of the 20th Century and helped make aviation a household word. He was one of the first pilots to fly non-stop across the United States and the only three-time winner of the Mackay Trophy.
I did know that Edith Head, the very famous costume designer who still holds the record of receiving eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, lived in Searchlight as a young child. Her mother had been married to a mining engineer and called Searchlight home for many years. Edith is considered one of the most influential costume designers in the history of film, working for Paramount Pictures for over four decades.
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| The history of Edith Head while living in Searchlight, Nevada |
I did not know that Clara Gordon Bow, the 1920s film star, used to visit Searchlight on a regular basis from her nearby abode, the Walking Box Ranch - named after a camera connected to a tripod for filming in the early days of Hollywood. The ranch was owned by Bow and her husband, actor Rex Bell, as a respite from the often craziness of the film crowd in Los Angeles.
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| Clara Bow's personal trunk on display in Searchlight, Nevada |
I did not know that Scot Joplin, the King of Ragtime, once wrote a song entitled Searchlight Rag in 1907, in honor of a couple of friends who had done some prospecting in Searchlight - Tom and Charles Turpin. The song was inspired by the tales the two brothers related to Joplin of their time spent in local bars in the area. Now, who would not like that song?
And, I did not know that a man by the name of William Harrell Nellis spent part of his youth in Searchlight before his family moved to Las Vegas when he was 13 years old. This man then went on to become a fighter pilot during World War II and flew in over 70 combat missions before being fatally shot down on December 27, 1944, over Luxemburg. On April 30, 1950, the Las Vegas Air Force Base changed its name to Nellis Air Force Base.
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| Nellis's own story in Searchlight, Nevada |
I did know that the late Senator Harry Mason Reid Jr. was born in Searchlight in 1939 but learned that he was one of four sons born to Harry Reid and Inez Orena Reid. The Senator’s father was a rock miner working various mines in the hills around Searchlight and his mother was a laundress for the local brothels in the area.
The things you learn while visiting museums!
Searchlight’s museum may be small but it is jam-packed with interesting tidbits about the history of the mining industry, and the famous folks who were either born there, visited there, or spent some time there during their lives.
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| There are quite of things to view at the museum in Searchlight, Nevada |
I wandered a bit and marveled at the care taken in preserving the memory of this small town, really in the middle of nowhere but actually in the middle of some pretty big stories.
For more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obKkQ4U31VA
https://www.clarkcountynv.gov/government/departments/parks___recreation/cultural_division/musuems/searchlight_musuem.php
John can be contacted at: beyersbyways@gmail.com
