Museum lecturer highlights 'Aurora'

Bob Stewart will speak at the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center 7 p.m. on Thursday. His subject will be Aurora, a ghost town in Mineral County, Nevada. Lectures are free and open to the public. The lecture is in the downstairs classroom in the museum, 1477 Highway 395 in Gardnerville. Information 782-2555.

After a working life that gave him a chance to see virtually all of Nevada, Stewart retired at the end of 2001. He had worked as a reporter for the Elko Daily Free Press and the old Nevada State Journal. Gov. Mike O'Callaghan appointed him as press secretary.

Through the 1970s, Stewart was also O'Callaghan's liaison between both state and federal natural resource agencies and the governor's office. When O'Callaghan left office, Stewart was named chief of public affairs for the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada.

In the early 1990s, Stewart and his wife Phyl spent two years in Washington where he was national chief of public affairs for the BLM. With a change in BLM leadership, he returned to Nevada, first as a 'fed' loaned to the Nevada Division of State Lands and then in the BLM State Office.

Although a midwesterner by birth, Stewart became interested in Nevada history shortly after arriving in the state in 1962. He has focused on the territorial period, especially the mining town of Aurora. Many visitors to Aurora, located downstream from Bodie, were asking lots of questions about the old town site so, in 1994, the Friends of Bodie State Park commissioned Stewart to write a 48-page book on Aurora.

When that edition was nearly sold out in 2003, the publisher asked Stewart to expand the book, resulting in the 128-page version published in October 2004.

As any author of material such as this can tell you, as soon as the volume is published, new information comes forward. A decision has been made to add one more 16-page signature to a volume planned for 2010.