Silver City: This Town is Forever

Silver City, Nevada - This year, Lyon County (as a community and region) was named among the top ten in the national Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize competition. Last week a team with members from five different states and four different health policy organizations visited the Lyon County community to help RWJF understand the region’s unique cross-sector work to give all residents opportunities to lead their healthiest lives. If the Lyon County region is designated a Culture of Health Community - a national designation - there will be a ceremony at Princeton and extensive publicity through film, press releases, etc. Winners will be announced in October of 2018.

The team had time for a three hour tour of several initiatives that showed some of the Lyon County community’s work to become a “culture of health.” After the tour, they met in Dayton with twenty selected community members from throughout the region to attend a dinner discussion on the topic.

The next morning, the team met with several of the Lyon County area's denizens to discuss how Lyon County, as a community, is using cross-sector collaboration and commonly held goals and strategy plans to increase opportunities for health and wellness. Those attending the breakfast meeting included Lyon School Superintendent Wayne Workman; Lyon County Human Services Director Edrie LaVoie; Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Counties Director Wendy Madson; Lyon Juvenile Probation Chief Eric Smith; and Turning Point, Inc Director Deborah Loesch Griffin. I also attended as the Resident Artist Program in Silver City Director and organizer for Silver City’s annual children’s arts and science program.

I was delighted that the morning discussion was held on the Comstock at the lovely Silver City School House/community center. As the team and community leaders gathered for the early morning discussion, they asked questions about the tiny but mighty mountain town and its commitment to a healthy environment.

I explained that although this Lyon County town has its roots in underground mining in the 1800s, over the last fifty years locals have leveraged the town’s social capital and collaborated with regional, state and national groups to create a very different focus.

We Silver City folks take great pains to preserve our rich history, which began with gold rush mining of the 1800s. For instance in 2007, the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office officially recognized Ron Reno and the Town of Silver City “for a remarkable effort, donated to excavate and document the Old School House.” In May, 2008, the Board of Lyon County Commissioners passed a resolution congratulating the citizens and community of Silver City’s “contribution towards the quality of life in the community through the completion of the Schoolhouse and subsequent dedication of the State Historical Marker 264.”

Although we’re careful to preserve our town’s history, we also understand that early mining operations caused environmental contamination. Over the last fifty years, the townspeople have worked hard to transform the town.

Part of that fifty year transformation involved making sure that the County’s land use zoning reflected the town’s modern manifestation as a residential community rather than as an industrial site.

In 1986, the American Planning Association gave the Silver City Residents Association its Outstanding Citizen Contribution to Planning in Nevada award for its successful opposition to Nevex Gold Company’s open pit mine proposal. In that year and for many years before and afterward, Lyon County Commissioners agreed that the town was not to be used for open pit mining. With continual civic involvement from the folks of the town, the County Commissioners affirmed through Master Plans of the 1970s, 1980s and 2010 that Silver City was zoned as a residential community rather than as a spot for heavy industrial use such as modern pit mining.

But in 2014 a new set of Commissioners made a radical departure from the common sense of the last fifty years on this issue.

Silver City continues to strive to be a "community of health" even as it faces a whole group of Goliaths who are hostile to that goal. The town has continued to oppose open pit mining in and adjacent to the townsite where drilling, blasting, exploration and pit mining disturbs and distributes contaminated material from 19th century mining operations. Residents continue to preserve the things that make the town worth fighting for, cultivating an organic community garden, organizing monthly community dinners, celebrating outdoor activity (a local women's hiking club was featured recently by the Nevada Conservation League through photos), and hosting public programming in music, art, science and more at the town's outdoor performance stage, community center and park.

*First published as a column by Quest Lakes in the MVN in June 2018.