Town file
Dayton, Nevada
Dayton, Nevada (Lyon County, Nevada) is the town in one episode of Small Town Murder, the comedy true-crime podcast: episode 79, "Maybe Satan Did It" (2 August 2018). In February 1993 Dayton, Nevada, was a former gold-mining town in Lyon County, about twenty minutes from Carson City and forty-five from Reno.
- Town
- Dayton
- County
- Lyon County
- State
- Nevada
- Country
- USA
- Episodes
- 79
- Approximate location
- 39.272, -119.545
Episode 79 / 2 August 2018 / 160 min / full
Maybe Satan Did It
""We're in Dayton", in western Nevada, and "it's in Lyon County, L-Y-O-N"" about 0:05:44
The case: Murder of Jason Kopack (February 1993). Read the case file.
The figures, as told in 2018
- Population
- 8,972
- Median age
- 38.8
- Median household income
- about $50,000
- Median home value
- $277,000
- Two-bedroom rent
- about $1,160
- Cost of living
- 103
- Religious
- 21.1%
- Property crime
- right about average
- Violent crime
- ▲ 25% higher than average
History, in brief
- Originally called Ponderer's Rest, at the western end of the 26-mile desert on the bend of the Carson River, where immigrants stopped for water and decided whether to follow the river south or go west. about 0:10:27
- Named Dayton after John Day, who laid out the town. about 0:12:16
- In 1849 Abner Blackburn found a gold nugget in Gold Creek, a tributary of the Carson River. about 0:12:45
- In 1850 people poured into the area to work the sandbars and dig for gold. about 0:13:11
- Nevada's first dance was held in the town at the trading post on New Year's Eve, 1853, attended by 150 men and nine women. about 0:15:09
- The first marriage in the state took place there in 1854, when a miner married a 14-year-old girl while her father was away; her father returned and took her to California. about 0:17:09
- Chinese miners came in 1857 to avoid the mining taxes levied on them in California. about 0:18:53
- By 1860 the town was mostly Chinese miners and was called Chinatown in the US census that year. about 0:19:52
- In 1861 the town officially adopted the name Dayton after a local surveyor. about 0:20:59
- Great fires in 1866 and 1870 destroyed much of the town, and by the 1870s it was far less prosperous. about 0:21:13
- A railroad came through in 1881, but until the First World War there were still only about 500 people. about 0:22:25
- In 1909 fire destroyed the Lyon County Courthouse. about 0:22:42
- There were about 2,500 people in 1865, and the population did not return to that level until about 1930, helped by tourists visiting the old gold rush sites. about 0:23:10
- In 1961 Dayton was the setting for The Misfits, a John Huston film that was the last screen appearance of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. about 0:23:36
- The population was 826 in 1970 and 2,217 by 1990. about 0:24:02
- The town's motto is "Nevada's oldest town", later changed to "Nevada's oldest community"; Genoa disputes the claim. about 0:09:05
Nearest Small Town Murder towns
- Incline Village, Nevada21 miles
- Minden, Nevada24 miles
- Sun Valley, Nevada26 miles
- Lemmon Valley, Nevada33 miles
- South Lake Tahoe, California33 miles
- Grass Valley, California81 miles
Everything here is as told in the episode, on the date it went out; figures and places may have changed since. Endings are covered: open an episode and use the spoiler switch to read them.