Reno

Reno, a city and the county-seat of Washoe county, Nevada, U.S.A., in the W. part of the state, on the Truckee river, and about 244 m. E. of San Francisco. Pop. (1890) 3 563; (1900) 4500 (9 1 5 foreign-born); (1910 census) 10,867. It is served by the Southern Pacific, the Virginia && Truckee and the NevadaCalifornia-Oregon railways. The city lies near the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 4484 ft. above the sea, and is in the most humid district of a state which has little rainfall. Among the public institutions are the university of Nevada (see Nevada), a United States Agricultural Experiment Station, a public library (1903), the Nevada Hospital for Mental Diseases (1882), the City and County Hospital and the People's Hospital. At Reno are railway shops (of the Nevada-California-Oregon railway) and reduction works, and the manufactures include flour, foundry and machine-shop products, lumber, beer, plaster and packed meats. Farming and stock-raising are carried on extensively in the vicinity. On the site of the present city a road house was erected in 1859 for the accommodation of travellers and freight teams on their way to and from California. By 1863 this place had become known as Lake's Crossing, and five years later it was chosen as a site for a station by the Central (now the Southern) Pacific railway, then building through the Truckee Valley. The new station was then named Reno, in honour of Gen. Jesse Lee Reno (1823-1862), a Federal officer during the Civil War, who was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers in November 1861 and major-general of volunteers in July 1862, and led the Ninth Corps at South Mountain, where he was killed. The city twice suffered from destructive fires, in 1873 and 1879. Reno was incorporated as a town in 1879 and chartered as a city. in 1899. Its city charter was withdrawn in 1901, but it was rechartered in 1903.