Reno, Nevada: From Lake's Crossing to a General's Name

Before it was Reno, Nevada, it was Lake’s Crossing, a toll bridge on the Truckee River. In 1868 the railroad’s new town took the name of Gen. Jesse Reno. As the old Nevada histories put it, he “fell at the battle of South Mountain.”

A bridge named for whoever owned it

The first name on this spot was a business name. Myron Angel’s 1881 History of Nevada says a man named Fuller settled on the south bank in 1859, where the river could be forded, and ran a wayside inn for the pack trains heading to “the newly-discovered land of silver.” In 1860 he put up a wooden toll bridge. The high water of the winter of 1862 carried it away.

In 1863 M. C. Lake took over the property and rebuilt the bridge, “the place becoming known as Lake’s Crossing,” in Angel’s words. The federal place-names record keeps the same timeline: Fullers Crossing 1859, Lakes Crossing 1863, Reno May 9, 1868. So the crossing changed names when the bridge changed hands.

Forty acres for a station

Then the Central Pacific came over the Sierra. It needed a stop on the Truckee where freight for Virginia City could be unloaded, and an 1888 history of Washoe County says the first survey pointed to Glendale. It “probably would have been chosen but for the rise of the river, which flooded the town.”

Lake owned the higher ground. Angel says he deeded forty acres to Charles Crocker “in consideration of his causing a station to be established there, laying it off in town lots, and conveying a certain number of the lots back again.” It was done. “The town was christened Reno, in honor of General Jesse Reno, who fell at the battle of South Mountain,” and the lots went up for auction on May 9, 1868, some of them bringing as much as $1,000.

Why a general’s name

You won’t find the name of the person who actually picked “Reno” in these books. Angel and the 1888 county history say the town was christened; H. H. Bancroft’s 1890 history says only that the Central Pacific founded it and named it for General Reno. All of them agree on the man it honors.

If you’ve ever wondered why a Nevada city shares its name with a county in Kansas, it’s the same general. Henry Gannett’s 1905 federal list of U.S. place names puts Reno County, Kansas, the Nevada town, and a village in Venango County, Pennsylvania, in one entry, all “named for Gen. Jesse L. Reno.”

Lake’s name didn’t go quietly

Lake’s Crossing hung around for a while. Bancroft noted in 1890 that “the name still survives in Lake house, a hotel on the original location of Fuller.” The 1888 county history says the crossing stood “where the Riverside Hotel, formerly the Lake House, now stands,” and the federal record still pins it to the site of the Riverside Hotel.

By 1913, though, the town had a new label to live up to. Sam Davis’s History of Nevada reported that Reno had been “justly christened the ‘Biggest Little City on the Map.’”

Sources & further reading

• Myron Angel (ed.), History of Nevada (Thompson & West, 1881), p. 634. Fuller’s inn and toll bridge, the 1862 flood, Lake’s Crossing from 1863, the forty acres deeded to Charles Crocker, the naming for General Jesse Reno, and the auction of May 9, 1868.
• H. H. Bancroft, History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming (1890), pp. 255–256. Reno founded by the Central Pacific in 1868 and named for General Reno; Fuller, Lake’s Crossing, and the Lake House.
• General History and Resources of Washoe County, Nevada (1888), p. 30. Glendale and the flood, the Riverside Hotel on the old Lake House site.
• Sam P. Davis (ed.), The History of Nevada, vol. 2 (1913), pp. 1031, 1034–1035. The Fuller and Lake story again, and the “Biggest Little City on the Map.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). Reno, Nevada, Reno County, Kansas, and Reno, Pennsylvania, all for Gen. Jesse L. Reno.
• GNIS feature 861100 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Reno, with its name timeline and the Riverside Hotel note.