Nevada

This one-story structure is the only Mission Revival building in Lincoln County besides the Caliente Depot. In the early twentieth century larger Nevada school districts in Reno and Las Vegas favored the style, but Lincoln County tended toward vernacular buildings. This school, designed by an architect in a fashionable style, displays the school district's desire for something that would stand out, not just in the community but also in southern Nevada.

Pioche's opera house is less fancy than those in Eureka and Virginia City, but it is one of the oldest surviving examples of the type in the state. Its simple wood-frame walls stand two stories tall, with a pedimented front-facing gable lending a classical touch. Originally a fulllength porch with upper balustrade embellished this structure, but it disappeared long ago. Above three double doors and a single door at street level, four pairs of doors once opened onto the top of the porch. The dilapi-dated building has stood vacant for a number of years.

Known as the “million dollar courthouse,” this Italianate structure is reputed to be the most expensive building erected by a county in nineteenth-century Nevada and stands as an example of government corruption. Construction costs totaled $75,000, equivalent to $1,084426 today—an amount far above the agreed-upon price. The debts incurred and the county's subsequent mismanagement resulted in a final cost of at least $800,000, equivalent to $11,567,213 today. The local government retired the debt in 1938, at the same time it was constructing a new Moderne courthouse.

The auditorium and gymnasium are identical structures with rectangular plans, brick walls, and bow-shaped roof trusses. On the stripped-classical facades pilasters divide each side into five bays, with a central entry marked by a cast concrete arch with tympanum and keystone. A new, T-shaped high school stands between the auditorium and gymnasium. These twin structures are the only extant historic example of such a pair of support buildings erected for a public school district in southern Nevada.

The largest and most elaborate dwelling in Panaca, this two-story brick structure shows the influence of the Queen Anne style in a crossgabled plan, gable-end stickwork, and shingles in the gable facing Main Street. The ingenuity of the builder is most evident in the unusual three-sided porch nestled between the two wings of the house and sheltering the front entry. Square columns of carved stone rise to a heavy stone balustrade enclosing a second-story balcony. A dormer wedged between the juncture of the two gables contains a door opening on the balcony.

A general store built by one of the town's early settlers has been converted to Panaca's local museum. The adobe brick walls are in remarkably good condition, saved by Nevada's dry climate and diligent maintenance over the years. Like many other early settlers in Nevada, the Mormons frequently used adobe as a building material in the more arid parts of the state, where lumber was scarce. The front porch is a replica of the original. The interior is one large room with a ceiling covered by narrow tongue-and-groove wood boards.

This row of wood-frame houses is the best collection of railroad workers' housing remaining in the state. The dwellings are ranged in an orderly sequence along the east side of Spring Street running north from the railroad, their regularity expressing the order that the railroad imposed on the town. The railroad owned the houses and rented them to workers until the 1950s, when it sold them. The dwellings follow either of two plans, both with front-facing gables, which alternate along the street.

Many railroads in the West favored the Mission Revival style for stations because it drew inspiration from the region's Hispanic past and evoked images of the old West to travelers. Caliente's Mission Revival depot is the largest building in town. Because Caliente served as a division point, the building had to be large enough to accommodate a hotel and restaurant, waiting rooms, offices, and storage areas. The plan is asymmetrical, with two projecting wings topped by scrolled parapets characteristic of the Mission Revival style.

Miller designed this building, another PWA project, as a near twin to the Bunkerville Community Center (
SO66), with the same red brick, terra-cotta ornamentation and massing of small rooms around three sides of the taller gymnasium. The Mesquite building, however, retains most of its original multilight, steelframe sash windows and therefore more of its original appearance than the other example.

The Pueblo Revival museum building is on Mesquite's main street, surrounded by a variety of residential and commercial structures. The L-shaped structure is compact, with an asymmetrical facade. One-story-tall rubble stone walls, 1½ feet thick, rise from a concrete foundation and terminate in a flat parapet capped by concrete. Pine poles support the roof, their ends projecting about 6 inches beyond the exterior walls. Window and door openings have concrete lintels and sills.