The Day the Music Died, Historic Mineral County Courthouse Nevada

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Here's a typical cell.

[00:00:17]That's steel. It's not even wood. It's a steel bed.

[00:00:22]And look, everything. It's like a steel box. Look at it. It's all riveted.

[00:00:27]Okay. But what about this one over here?

[00:00:29]Is it the same?

[00:00:32]These safe gun handling rules applied to 1960 still apply today. And that is always keep a gun pointed in a safe direction. Knows know what's beyond the target or what's beyond the line of sight from the gun. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. And treat every firearm as if it was loaded.

[00:00:56]Oh, and you can see this door here is also very heavy. Also got this big heavy latch on it.

[00:01:18]>> Okay, we're going to go over towards the courtroom now.

[00:01:23]So, what happened years ago was a very serious incident. There was a sheriff here. I'm assuming that's a sheriff's deputy uh who was I'm not sure what he was doing with his long gun. A long gun is a rifle. He might have been cleaning it or checking the brereech or trying to sight it in or something, but apparently he had his rifle like this and he was handling his rifle like that, doing something with it and it was loaded and it he ended up shooting through this window and he shot the lady across the street on that corner who was at her home minding her own business playing the piano. He shot her dead from here by accident and uh the family uh ended up getting I think it was a large large sum of money in compensation for that. But from this window right here, that woman that was playing her piano in that private residence was shot here by the sheriff.

[00:02:28]This behind me is an addition to the courthouse.

[00:02:33]Originally, it didn't have this block right here. It was more of a a rectangle shape. And then later in time, they decided they needed it and they added this section.

[00:02:44]>> You know, this jail is a lot bigger than what I was expecting. I think the jailer had a had a his hands full a little bit over here. Quite a few cells.

[00:02:51]>> I bet he did.

[00:03:49]Heat. Heat.

[00:04:02]Heat.

[00:04:06]Heat.

[00:04:13]Heat. Heat.

[00:05:02]Here we go.

[00:05:18]Look at these big fat peie buds. Let's pick Kelly a bouquet and bring him down to the museum.

[00:05:28]>> Hi.

[00:05:28]>> Hi, Kelly. Are you open today?

[00:05:30]>> Yep, we are. Come on in. I got some questions about the old Mineral County Courthouse.

[00:05:34]>> Okay, great.

[00:05:38]>> Kelly, you're always so stylish. You got the bling bling sandals on today.

[00:05:43]>> Yeah, I do.

[00:05:44]>> Good thing you don't wear those when we're hiking with the rattlesnakes.

[00:05:46]>> No. No way.

[00:05:49]>> Well, Kelly, you know, a lot of people appreciate you and you're very sweet person. And you know, uh, we're starting a tradition because this will be the second time in the spring that I've brought you some peies. They're beautiful.

[00:06:01]>> Appreciation for all you've done for the channel and for everybody out there, all the subscribers. This is from myself and all the subscribers for you.

[00:06:10]>> Thank you very much. They're beautiful.

[00:06:14]>> Oo, some of these smell really good.

[00:06:16]Nice and fragrant.

[00:06:23]Well, here comes Kelly. She must have found some rare documents or something.

[00:06:27]I see actual white gloves right there.

[00:06:30]I think you found a few things, Kelly.

[00:06:32]>> Yeah, I did. I wanted to show you some of the things that I found.

[00:06:37]>> These are some photos dated 1889 that are taken from the balcony of the courthouse.

[00:06:44]>> Look at that.

[00:06:46]Most of it's still desert. Looks like there's a dust devil in the distance.

[00:06:51]There's another one right there.

[00:06:57]And here's yet another one.

[00:07:00]I think I see where my house is now. And back then it was just a bunch of dirt.

[00:07:08]And then you can see that all these pictures are labeled and they know the people and the businesses that were there at that time. Very interesting.

[00:07:20]>> See where Doug is right there? Um, I have a lot of pictures at the museum that were shot from this balcony that are on display there.

[00:07:29]>> There's from that balcony on the courthouse.

[00:07:45]You can see how big these trees got over the years.

[00:07:49]Here are some photos of the old courthouse.

[00:08:05]Here it is before Ith had trees and lawns and all that on there.

[00:08:09]>> It's so barren.

[00:08:10]>> Yes, very much so. And this is inside the courthouse when it was in use at the time. And then this room is just a different angle of the same room of in the same >> room.

[00:08:21]>> There's a calendar, but I can't read the year on that one.

[00:08:23]>> Yeah, it's too far. And then of course that's the um you know the room, the courtroom. And then this is a picture of Sam Kelso, the county clerk in the courtroom of the old Mineral County Courthouse. And it is said that Douglas looks like Sam Kelso.

[00:08:38]>> Okay.

[00:08:38]>> And then this here, if you notice, this is a courthouse from 1910. And this is before it had its addition because that was right here is where the addition is now. Douglas is going to be reading this article here and he's wearing a pair of gloves just because we want to have protection for the newspaper.

[00:08:56]>> Mineral County Independent and Hawthorne News, Hawthorne, Nevada, Wednesday, August 2nd, 1961. This is after the fact on about the 22nd day of December 1960 about the hour of 7:00 on said day. Frank Sus and Patrick Gonzalez are either of them employees of the county of mineral state of Nevada and the town of Hawthorne uh state of Nevada acting within the scope of their employment and as agent employees and servants of said count mineral county and said incorporated town of Hawthorne Nevada carelessly negligently and wantingly did cause to be discharged of Remington model 721 30 odd six rifle in such a fashion that the slug from cartridge and said rifle struck and instantly killed Vera L. Felts who was in a broom the broom at her home at 132 Fifth Street Hawthorne Mineral County Nevada Mineral County Independent Hawthorne Nevada Wednesday September 28th 1960 Mrs. Ben Felts victim of stray shot prominent matron killed in home here Thursday night. A tragic accident shortly after 7 p.m. last Thursday took the life of Mrs. Vera L. Felt, 62 years old, widely known and respected Hawthorne matron. She was killed instantly.

[00:10:08]See, the rifle fired at the sheriff's office was the same one which had been used in a shooting that occurred early in the morning of September 20th at a residence in Hawthorne when a Reno woman, Mary Hunter, was struck in the ankle after one shot had been fired by Shai Moore, owner of the gun. after Moore was fined $300 on Thursday for that shooting. The rifle was held in the sheriff's office and placed in the vault.

[00:10:34]Okay. They were they were examining the rifle.

[00:10:39]Uh Gonzalez held the rifle and the bullet pierced through the south side of the sheriff's office window facing Fifth Street and hit the FEL residence on the corner.

[00:10:52]and it's talking about the bullet enter her arm and it's basically a it's basically a deer hunting rifle. You can actually kill an elk with a 30 odd 6 and she was uh killed instantly unfortunately. Very tragic.

[00:11:07]This is the back side of the jail. You can see the bars going across the windows there. And there's that plate where there was a jail escape. They had to fix the wall after he dug through the wall and escaped.

[00:11:20]There's the side, the north side.

[00:11:24]There's the other part of the jail. A good portion of the building is the jail, I've noticed, along with the courthouse and the the public records.

[00:11:39]There's those big trees now.

[00:11:42]Very old.

[00:11:45]Here's the front entrance. There's that balcony right there.

[00:11:49]Now, if you remember the plate on the back of the jail where Doug shot that photo of of it, that's where they had chipped away and made a hole and three um men got out of that hole. They escaped, all three of them. And one of them was Peterson, who was um in jail.

[00:12:08]He was charged for a fatal shooting of Mrs. Virginia Mahon of the Cliff House Resort 12 miles north of town. and she is actually buried at uh the lake.

[00:12:18]>> So, one was a murder and the other were two petty criminals.

[00:12:21]>> Criminals. Yeah. They were a little bit younger, but they were two petty criminals. And they picked them all three of them up in Fallon the next week.

[00:12:38]>> And when you first walk in to the left, what room is this, Kelly? This is the recorder's office or was the recorder office.

[00:12:45]>> The recorder's office. And then right across here, what's this one here with number two on it?

[00:12:50]>> This is the assessor's office.

[00:12:51]>> Oh, tax assessor's office.

[00:12:53]>> Yes.

[00:12:56]>> Look at the high ceiling. Is that a tin ceiling? I think that is a tin ceiling.

[00:13:00]You don't see those too often anymore.

[00:13:02]>> No, >> that's from way back.

[00:13:04]>> One of the few that's intact in here.

[00:13:06]>> Yes. Okay, let's look a kitchen area.

[00:13:10]And there's a little bathroom back here.

[00:13:14]Regular public bathroom.

[00:13:18]Here's a piece of the tin ceiling, which was common during that era. Here's a map on the wall of the courthouse that shows you how close Aurora is to the California state line, but it's actually in Nevada. And if you look closely, we're right here, and that's Hawthorne right there. There's Walker Lake and there's Lake Tahoe to give you an idea where we're at.

[00:13:42]This is the sheriff's office in this room.

[00:13:46]And there was an infamous incident that happened in here years ago right from this window.

[00:13:53]And if you look across the street on the corner, there's a house over there. And there was a woman playing the piano years ago. Here's the sheriff's office.

[00:14:02]And there's the infamous window.

[00:14:05]And here's Kelly. Kelly, you're all lined up for a mug shot. We can see what height you are. It's got all the It's got the height right behind it. It says Mineral County Sheriff's Department, Hawthorne, Nevada.

[00:14:19]You'd make a pretty good mug shot right there. You got too much smiling going on for a mug shot, though.

[00:14:23]>> That's true. I wouldn't be smiling.

[00:14:25]>> This is the door that opens from the sheriff's office into the recorder's office.

[00:14:30]>> Doug is sitting on the benches that were originally in the courthouse. Um, this is where you would wait for uh whatever you were waiting for to talk to the district attorney, pay your taxes or whatever.

[00:14:42]>> In the hall across from the sheriff's office is the jail.

[00:14:47]That's a heavy door, isn't it? Very.

[00:14:48]>> It's hard to open that.

[00:14:52]>> And this is the kitchen area that the sheriffs would use to, you know, feed the prisoners or maybe themselves.

[00:14:58]>> And you'll notice some of the older electrical boxes here. And then also the jail. Now, this on the right is a solitary confinement. And this one right here is the main jail where most of the prisoners were kept. It's a lot larger, but this one to the right is basically solitary confinement. This is where the crazy people or people that were completely drunk out of their mind. They would be sent here. Let's take a look at this one. So, here's the solitary confinement cell. And immediately you'll see there's some real interesting graffiti here. And it's got a big long uh Bible verse. And it's got a little place for the bed right here. And of course, it had the heavy door. There's all kinds of there's all kinds of graffiti in here from years ago. That one right there says home sweet home on the top. And then you'll notice that there's a solid uh door here. And this wall didn't have that hole in that years ago. But in the back, what do we have in the back here, Kelly?

[00:16:00]>> Well, what we have back here is the women's solitary confinement. If they were completely separated, they wouldn't even know who was in the other uh cell.

[00:16:09]But this is where the women would be if they were the ones out of >> So close. I didn't even know they were on the other side of the wall.

[00:16:15]>> That's right. And notice this toilet. I think this is a very interesting design.

[00:16:20]>> That's a little sink up there.

[00:16:22]>> Yeah.

[00:16:23]>> Huh. You can see some of the old bricks >> right there.

[00:16:29]and it has a really high ceiling.

[00:16:33]You can see the accommodations here.

[00:16:39]We'll go to the main part of the jail, which is in the next room over, which is a lot larger.

[00:16:46]Look at the heavy lock mechanism on this door.

[00:16:50]Looks like it's solid steel. Very interesting. So, what do we have in this jail here, Kelly? Well, some sort of walkway. And if you see, there's another one of those sinks over there. And then there's some jail cells over in here for individual cells.

[00:17:06]And then if you look up, there's a larger cell right there.

[00:17:11]And it does have a partition in there.

[00:17:13]So, I'm sure that they >> heavy heavy steel partition.

[00:17:16]>> Yeah. And then this looks like maybe some sort of group sale or something, you know. I'm not sure what that's about, but And then, you know, it goes over here and has a ladder to get to it, >> right?

[00:17:27]>> And then there's a shower.

[00:17:29]>> Here's the shower. Let's take a look.

[00:17:31]There's the shower. There's the window to the outside.

[00:17:36]And of course, there's a lot of graffiti in here. Also, there's Marlin T. Anybody know Marlon T?

[00:17:45]There he is.

[00:18:00]There's a lot of graffiti in this cell.

[00:18:02]>> And look at this one. It's like an Indian profile. See the Indian there and the arrows.

[00:18:11]And there's the Thunderbird.

[00:18:14]And there's some more.

[00:18:18]There's another looks like a He's got an orb on and it on right there.

[00:18:24]And Butch.

[00:18:27]Right there.

[00:18:30]>> Are you comfortable, Doug?

[00:18:32]>> Not really. There's no mattress on here.

[00:18:34]Solid steel.

[00:18:35]>> Look at underneath here. There's some uh extra supports.

[00:18:41]>> Look at that artwork on that horse.

[00:18:43]Pretty good.

[00:18:44]>> Yeah. There's some other Indian drawings in here. Also, >> look at this one. It says just passing through.

[00:18:59]Look at the outline of that stiletto knife.

[00:19:01]>> And look over here.

[00:19:04]>> Checker board.

[00:19:05]>> Checker board for chess or checkers. And then on the roof it says Tony Ricky Scott busted.

[00:19:20]This steel door is going to the outside.

[00:19:42]>> What are you doing in there, Kelly?

[00:19:43]>> I'm just killing time. Just killing time.

[00:19:55]Here's the exterior where that addition is. And the window to the right of the door in the first level is where that sheriff shot the woman playing the piano. And then you'll notice there's a a door leading under there. We can't go in there now. Why can't we go through that door, Kelly?

[00:20:26]>> That door right in there leads to a basement and the sheriffs use it to store their um records and they also did their shooting down there.

[00:20:34]>> Oh, there's a shooting range inside.

[00:20:36]Indoor shooting range.

[00:20:36]>> Shooting range. And right now it's full of storage and they don't really want anybody in there.

[00:20:41]>> Right.

[00:20:43]>> Here's the outside of the door that leads directly into the jail.

[00:20:59]We're going to go upstairs to the second level.

[00:21:05]Got the big banister.

[00:21:14]And look at these tall ceilings.

[00:21:16]Goodness.

[00:21:18]A lot of these older buildings have the tall ceilings in the desert, especially to help with the heat in the summertime.

[00:21:25]Here's the clerk treasurer's office.

[00:21:30]Up until 1973, Douglas would have had to pay his taxes right here in this room here in the clerk and treasurer's office. They have two safes and they kept their records that are or any important document and cash in these two safes right here.

[00:21:51]>> And you notice both of these safes have the same manufacturing mark on them and they were both made by the Herring Hall Marvin Safe Company in San Francisco.

[00:22:01]Both this one and that one right there.

[00:22:03]And what's interesting too, tell us about these chairs over here, Kelly.

[00:22:08]>> Those chairs right there are jury chair chairs. There's one missing, but they will be or they would be in the courtroom, which is where >> on the other side of that wall is the courtroom. And there's 11 of the 12 jury original jury chair chairs that are still there. Interesting.

[00:22:25]>> We're heading into room number four.

[00:22:28]This is looking north out the window.

[00:22:31]And these on this side face the LCAP Casino. El Capitan Casino. But the windows are kind of dirty. But if we go over here from to the balcony, it's a clear shot to the casino here. And you can see there it is the El Capitan right there.

[00:22:50]And there's the big trees that we see from the front.

[00:22:57]This room number seven was the district attorney's office right here.

[00:23:05]And then back in that corner, that was the judge's chambers. To the left is the jury room. We're going to head over to the jury room from the DA's office.

[00:23:16]Right here, there's room six.

[00:23:19]There's the court room.

[00:23:24]And that would be where the jury booth would be. All those chairs would be there. And then the judge would be in this uh far end by the wall between the windows. That's where the judge would be. Tell us about these massive bookshelves, Kelly. What's going on with these bookshelves?

[00:23:40]>> Well, that's where they stored their law books. And right now, they are in the museum.

[00:23:46]>> Look at that. Genuine Billy Club hanging on the law bookshelves.

[00:23:52]>> I have a big portion of the law books that were originally on that shelf. Some of them are from Esmeralda County and some of them are from Mineral County.

[00:24:03]>> That must have been a lot of work cataloging all that.

[00:24:06]>> Uh yeah, it is. Um we do it all the time. We inventory a lot of books.

[00:24:12]>> This is what those empty shelves in the courtroom looked like years ago. Look at all the law books there that were on those shelves and all the activity.

[00:24:23]Back in the 80s, there was a time when they were cleaning up in here and there was so much pigeon poop that it w they had to wear HVAC suits. And Doug is showing about how high that was. It was uh pretty deep. And it, you know, it can be pretty toxic when you're working around bird experiment like that. And it took them a while to clean it up. And of course, pigeons are sneaking in here all the time and they're always cleaning it up. So, this is a continuous progress.

[00:25:04]You can see how tall the building is with Kelly walking along the side there.

[00:25:10]It's a massive building.

[00:25:16]On the south side of the courthouse, you can see where the school was, and it's still standing, too.

[00:25:24]And on the north side of the cold courthouse, you can see where the old gym is. And it's also standing right there.

[00:25:36]Going up the steps here. Going inside.

[00:25:44]Look at the tin ceiling in this area.

[00:25:50]Well, Kelly, you know, I know over the years in our friendship, we've had a lot of discussions and and about the courthouse and you were talking about how it was like just like a it got to the point where it's just like a big old pigeon coupe. It was in really disarray and it was really, you know, disheartening to see. And it seems like now that there's a we got a a concerned citizen Heidi Bunch and she's been spearheading some uh efforts and interest and u getting a lot of volunteers, a lot of work and she's made it a really done a lot of cleanup on this and uh what are your thoughts and what's what about what's going on with the historic courthouse?

[00:26:25]>> Well, we're going to interview uh Heidi Bunch right now, but she does not want to be seen on camera because she's been cleaning down here and she's all dusty and she's like, "Oh, no. Well, I don't want to be seen.

[00:26:35]>> A true a true volunteer. She's really got her grubbies on. She's getting like the down and dirty cleaning the elbow grease and just, you know, there's a lot of stuff to clean up here and she's got some volunteer help, too. But she's actually doing it's a hot day, too. And she's been doing some heavy work.

[00:26:49]>> So, what are you what would you like to see with this, Heidi?

[00:26:53]>> I think I would like to see somewhat of like what Belmont's doing. I would like to see it revitalized. I could really see a bride standing on the front uh steps with her dress coming down, a reception. If you had a loved one that passed away, you can come in here. If you have a meeting, just rent out our spot. Um get to know Hawthorne, get to know our downtown area. This is the heart of Hawthorne at one time. I would love to see it come back to life.

[00:27:20]>> Well, what do you think would uh take to get that going?

[00:27:24]>> Volunteers. Um, I have had a really good relationship with Minnow County, Minnow County Museum, uh, Doug and Kelly obviously, and, um, everybody that's donated to even just get the plexiglass up or to get the paint, uh, the money for the paint, which we're waiting for Shipo to approve. It just, uh, help, time, and money.

[00:27:46]>> Okay. Wonderful.

[00:27:47]>> It would be great to, you know, repurpose the building and have it used into the modern era. It's amazing. I personally I mean no offense to the new courthouse but I personally think the old this old one is a lot more interesting has more character.

[00:28:01]>> I agree.

[00:28:02]>> Yeah. I think we all agree on that.

[00:28:03]>> Yes.

[00:28:16]Now when I'm at home practicing my steel guitar I can't help but think about Mrs. Vera felts.

[00:29:40]Huh? Heat.

[00:29:53]Heat.