In their capacities as railroadmen, timber contractors, icemakers, canal dredgers, truck gardeners, dairymen and merchants, the Italian population penetrated Nevada’s fabric more deeply and with greater staying power than did the shafts of the Comstock and the Tonopah-Goldfield mining districts with their boom and bust cycles. It is scarcely hyperbolic to say that from about 1880 to 1914 Italians (mainly North Italians) were important architects of the economy of western Nevada and the adjacent Sierra Nevada. The real challenge is to capture his time rather than his attention as he dances from his duties as chief of Verdi’s volunteer fire department, to his caretaker’s job at Donner Trail Ranch, to solitary trips in his vintage military jeep to his beloved Sierra Nevada mountains. Whether extolling the virtues of Indian tea, recounting how he acquired his house for ten dollars, commenting on current events or showing off an unusual tool from the treasure trove in his basement (which is rather like a well-stocked turn-of-the-last-century hardware store), Joe enthralls his listener. As the elder statesman of Verdi, Joe regales his many visitors with a wealth of stories about his own experiences and those of others, imbued with a sense of wonderment at the enormity of the changes that have transpired during his lifetime.
For more than three quarters of a century he has also been an acute observer and inveterate raconteur of life in northern Nevada.
Douglass UNOHP Catalog #133 Description Jack-of-all-trades and master of most, Joe Mosconi, who was born in 1899, has been a rancher, dairyman, truck gardener, field hand, buckaroo, laborer, fireman, first aid instructor, construction foreman, logger, timber contractor, ice delivery man and caretaker. Mosconi Interviewed: 1983 Published: 1985 Interviewer: William A. An Interview with Joseph Mosconi Interviewee: Joseph P.
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