On your way to or from Unionville, plan to pull over in Imlay for a few hours. Here, you can peruse an array of artifacts from Lovelock’s early days, including antique mining equipment, pioneer home relics, and a selection of personal items that belonged to silent film actress and former resident Edna Purviance. You can see this still-standing historic building in the hub of town, and also swing by the nearby Marzen House Museum while you’re at it. An English settler by the name of George Lovelock purchased 320 acres of land here in 1866, providing 85 of them to the Transcontinental Railroad when a depot was built in 1868.
Lovelock, NV was also a popular stop for those traveling the Humboldt Trail to California back in the 1840s. Made from bundles of tule stems, shaped to resemble canvasback ducks, the eleven recovered Tule Duck Decoys were untouched for more than 2,000 years and the oldest duck decoys of their kind found anywhere on Earth. Nevada’s Tule Duck Decoy is in a class of its own, because it is representative of the American Indians of Nevada’s Great Basin in specific, and nowhere else.
