Bertha Bishop Ronzone presided over what was once the largest, privately-owned chain of department stores in Nevada. Born in Iowa on April 16, 1885, Bishop moved with her family to California when she was a child. In 1901, at age sixteen, she married Attilio "Ben" Ronzone, a gold prospector. The Ronzones relocated to Alaska where they spent two years. By 1903, the news of mineral strikes in Nevada reached the couple.

In 1980, the Utah Folklife Center, under the direction of Utah State Folk Arts Coordinator Hal Cannon, expanded its focus beyond the Beehive State's borders and became the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada. Cannon remains the Founding Director. The Western Folklife Center's mission is to study, preserve, and perpetuate the rural culture of the West.

William Ralston was a California investor who assembled the means to monopolize the Comstock Lode during the 1860s. Born in Ohio in 1826, Ralston moved to San Francisco in 1854 and became a rising star as part owner in a steamship company. Beginning in 1860, he turned his attention and his investments to Comstock mines.

The site of modern-day Winnemucca has been important to Nevada since the first explorers traversed the region in the late 1820s. It later became a critical place for early settlers, and marked the point at which the immigrant trail headed south toward the Sierra Nevada passes. Winnemucca became a major distribution point for the Central Pacific Railroad, established itself as the center of commerce in north-central Nevada, and was the site of a major bank robbery that remains controversial to this day.