Founded as a railroad-promoted townsite and railhead for the White Pine mines in 1869, Elko has served for generations now as the provincial capital of an enormous cattle ranching empire embracing parts of four states. Sixty years ago Lowell Thomas called Elko "the last real cowtown in the American West," and until about 15 years ago that was still a good thumbnail description. But sophisticated new mining technologies permit the harvesting of microscopic particles of the precious metal from mountains (literally) of rock and dirt hauled 200 tons at a time to the crusher. Half a dozen large mining operations produce millions of ounces of gold a year in the region, and even though mining is now on the wane, their impact has transformed the old cowtown into a prosperous young city. In the decade from 1980, when population stood at about 10,000 people (city-size by Nevada standards) to 1990, the population had almost doubled. In one hectic 12-month period beginning in July, 1986, Elko's population increased by 21 percent. This growth is spread across the city, and across many square miles of countryside to the south where Spring Creek was developed in the 1970s, but it is most evident on Elko's east end. Here a bright, new business district has blossomed at the freeway offramp, anchored by shopping centers and the Red Lion Casino. Now there's another commercial nexus at the other freeway offramp, and the city center, built more than a century and a quarter ago around the railroad switching yard, has undergone a considerable renaissance in recent years.  There was a time when you could get an espresso at one lonesome place in town; now it's everywhere. As if to emphasize Elko's youthful urbanity, there was even a tanning salon on Railroad Street! Well, you can't buy a tan on Railroad Street any more, but you can get a latte at Cowboy Joe's and eat nouvelle cuisine at the Stray Dog Cafe next door on Yuppie Row. But don't worry, the traditional Basque hotels still flourish along the south side of Silver Street (south of the Stockmen's and much wider without the railroad tracks). The Bil-Toki is a Basque dinner house and bar, The Nevada and The Star cater to a regular lodging clientele, but open their dining rooms to the general public at supper time. They offer hearty food and plenty of it, served family-style. The atmosphere is at once homey and exotic, a pleasantly provocative combination. The Pioneer Hotel is a 19th century landmark, now refurbished in grand style to house the Western Folklife Center. The Center originated the Cowboy Poetry Gathering and other projects aimed at preserving and celebrating Western American traditions. An exhibition gallery is now open, showing ranch-fashioned items, from leather chaps to meticulously braided horsehair ropes, all so finely made they might be sculpture or jewelry. A gift shop offers wonderful hand-made goods for sale, as well as books and other merchandise.  The Commercial and the Stockmen's are still dominating presences downtown, but one great landmark is gone now: the switching yard that spawned the city in the first place. It hasn't been missed. A few pessimists declared that moving the Western Pacific switching yard three miles east would eliminate

 the train whistles at all hours of the night and Elko's birth rate would decline (local joke). The community is delighted with the peace and quiet, and you'll appreciate all the free parking. Elko — conflicting (and slightly absurd) stories are offered to explain the name; none is entirely persuasive — prospered rapidly after its founding. By 1870 townsite lot prices had multiplied three and four times, the population had risen to 2,000 or more, and the place had begun to assume its character as the leading settlement of Nevada's great northeastern cattle country.  By 1873 Elko was in so soaring and optimistic a municipal mood, largely on account of the success of the mining discoveries in the districts to the north and south, that it had bid for and won the State University. The university opened with seven students in 1874, and closed ten years later with 15, to be moved unceremoniously to Reno. As a freighting center, Elko fell into decline after the mining towns it served, and population fell to less than 1,000. Despite the steady growth and importance of the livestock business in the high desert valleys around Elko,

 the town's affairs did not brighten considerably until 1907. In that year not only did the Western Pacific Railroad reach Elko, but mining revived as ripples of excitement radiated out from Tonopah and Goldfield. The price of beef went from 31/2 to 8 cents a pound, and wool from 4 to 60 cents. In 1911 Elko's population was nudging 3,000. Prosperity continued until the devastating one-two of the failure of the Wingfield banking chain and the national depression which followed immediately after. Caught in the machinery activated to sort out the bank failure and bled by the decline in livestock prices, many of the ranches around Elko were foreclosed. In the years after the beef and wool economies fell into chaos, gambling was made legal by the state legislature. Elko, like towns everywhere in Nevada, had a new industry, and unlike most, it had an entrepreneur to make the most of it. Newton Crumley had operated saloons and hotels in Tonopah, Goldfield, and Jarbidge before he settled in Elko in 1925 and bought the Commercial Hotel. He and his son, Newton Jr., operated the