Our next stop in Nevada was Dayton. Not a real ghost town, as it has a population of over 8000 and is locater straight on the highway. But the old downtown is rather interesting.
There are a few buildings left from the gold rush era.
Dayton is at the western end of the Twenty-Six Mile Desert at a bend in the Carson River. Immigrants stopping there for water would consider whether to follow the river south or continue west, giving the location its first name, Ponderers Rest. In 1849, Abner Blackburn, while heading for California, discovered a gold nugget in nearby Gold Creek, one of the tributaries of the Carson River.
By 1850, placer miners settled at the mouth of Gold Canyon, working sand bars deposited over the millennia along the path of the creek.(1)
When we were visiting Genoa I say the “First settlement in Nevada” sigh and I was very surprised the same in Dayton. Later I found out that there is a dispute between Dayton and Genoa about which one is the oldest town. Genoa had post office first, but Dayton was inhebited earlier.