The Courier Archive

With the decline of silver to be mined from the Comstock in the 1870's and wagon traffic to and from California through the older settlement of Genoa, Gardnerville became the market and traffic hub of Douglas County, serving the prosperous ranching and agricultural population that had settled in the Carson Valley.

In 1879, Lawrence Gilman, who owned a hotel in Genoa, bought seven and a half acres from local cattle ranchers John and Mary Gardner. He moved his abandoned hotel to the new site of Gardnerville and opened it as the Gardnerville Hotel in 1881, shortly thereafter establishing a post office. Gardnerville slowly continued to draw business from Genoa.

One of those seeking their fortune in Douglas County's new boom town was George I. Lamy a "Professor of Violin," who had settled in Carson City a few years previously, giving lessons and tuning pianos. In 1898, when the town decided that it needed its own newspaper, a subscription was raised to purchase the printing press of the abandoned Reno Tribune, and Professor Lamy stepped up to manage and edit the new weekly newspaper, the Gardnerville Record, issuing its first edition on July 12, 1898.

The launch of a new newspaper was an occasion for congratulations by other newspaper editors. George Smith, editor of the rival Genoa Courier, greeted Lamy's new enterprise: "The presses and printing material for the new Gardnerville paper arrived this week. The outfit weighs about 6 tons, and the proprietor, Prof. Lamy, has about the same amount of confidence and energy. So we may look for an exceptionally bright paper from that quarter in a few days."

Lamy took out advertisements for his new paper in the Morning Appeal promising, "All the latest news. Short spicy paragraphs. Progressive journalism. Subscription $1.50 a year if paid in advance." Lamy hustled for four years, but in the end, he sold the Record to Dr. Stoddard Southworth who installed his son Charley as editor. In 1904, a fire totally destroyed the printing office and equipment. Southworth, instead of replacing the Record's plant, bought the rival Gardnerville The Courier, (transplanted from Genoa by George Smith in 1899) merging it into the Record-Courier. But Southworth and sons ended up selling the paper that same year to W.C. Ezell and Bert Selkirk. "Between the doctor and the freckled boys," the Carson City Appeal reported appreciatively about the Southworth family, "they have issued one of the best papers in Western Nevada." As Southworth headed south to Bodie to open a real estate and mining brokerage, Bert Selkirk settled down with his wife to manage the paper, which he did for the next forty years. He retired in 1944. The Record-Courier has since seen a succession of new owners and is still published today, making it one of Nevada's longest continuously published newspapers.