Nevada Genealogy Trails Esmeralda County Honorable George S. Nixon Biography

The practice, which has become a habit, of indicating public men as examples worthy of emulation by all youths has been a source of annoyance to many a lad, and who has not been wearied by "keep-on, maybe-you'11-be-president" admonitions? "Who's Who" has no desire to give such advice to the young men of Nevada, and consequently will merely outline the steps by which George Nixon rose from the position of an under-paid telegrapher to that of United States Senator from Nevada, without attempting to point a moral.

George S. Nixon was born in Newcastle, Placer County, California, April 2, 1862. His parents had crossed the plains to the Pacific Coast eleven years before. In Newcastle the youthful Nixon learned telegraphy, inspired probably by that unaccountable desire that possesses nearly every boy when he first hears the mysteries of the Morse Code. He went to Humboldt. Nevada, as an employee of the Southern Pacific. He was the agent. His duties consisted in part of sweeping out, keeping up the fires, answering questions, sending messages, looking after freight, keeping cattle off the track, and incidentally selling tickets to those who had the price and desire to travel beyond the confines of Humboldt.

In 1883 he went to Belleville, on the Carson and Colorado Railroad, where he acted as agent. His duties were similar to those he had performed at Humboldt, with the addition, perhaps, of a few other tasks. After a year passed in Belleville, the embryonic Senator accepted — we say "accepted," while as a matter of fact, owing to the few opportunities for material advancement at Belleville, he probably "seized it eagerly" — a position in the First National Bank at Reno, the institution that is now the Washoe County Bank. Three years later Mr. Nixon went to Winnemucca, where he organized the First National Bank of Winnemucca. He served as cashier of the bank for fifteen years, then became its president.

Senator Nixon's first experience in law-making bodies came in 1891, when he was elected to the Legislature, and his rise in the councils of the Republican party was even more rapid than in the business world. This reached the pinnacle when he was chosen to represent Nevada in the United States Senate.

When a boy his dream was that some day he might become the owner of a bank. Since that time he has made a whole chain of banks, become United States Senator, entered the lists of the mining men of Nevada in the foremost rank and made for himself a name which is known at home and abroad. His connection with the great Goldfield Consolidated, as its president, is well known, for the history of most of the greatest mines of Goldfield, has been written in many languages and read in many climes.

There is not a camp in Nevada in which the Senator has no interests. He built the Nixon Block in Goldfield at a time when few men would have had the courage to put a large sum of money into such an enterprise. His faith in the camp has been repaid many fold. Senator Nixon is a genial man with the faculty of seeing the humorous side of things, and is the life of any company he honors ; energetic, ambitious and optimistic, he succeeds in imparting optimism to others — the kind of optimism that is making Southern Nevada.

Source:
Who's who in Nevada By Bessie Beatty 1907
Contributed by Barbara Z.