Lincoln statue missing

This year’s Nevada Day celebration in Carson City was organized around a Lincoln theme because 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.

As part of our research at the time, we discovered that in 1937, U.S. Sen. Key Pittman of Nevada presented a statue of Lincoln to Gov. Richard Kirman. Kirman accepted it and said it would be “maintain[ed] forever in the state of Nevada.”

So where is it? No one we’ve talked to knows of a Lincoln statue in Nevada.

The news of the statue took Nevada historians by surprise.

“We’ve memorialized Lincoln in a lot of ways, but I don’t know of a statue,” said historian Guy Louis Rocha, former state archives director who lives in Carson City.

There is a portrait of Lincoln in the Nevada Legislature, a Lincoln bust in the governor’s office, and a Lincoln County, plus innumerable other, smaller honors for the 16th president, but no known statue.

“There might be something minor or small that I haven’t heard about, but we don’t have anything significant that I know of,” responded author and UNLV professor Michael Green, who gave a lecture on Lincoln at the Nevada State Museum last month, when he was asked about Lincoln statues.

If anyone has any information on the whereabouts of the statue, please let us know at <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">{ document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,97,32,104,114,101,102,61,34,109,97,105,108,116,111,58,114,101,110,111,108,101,116,116,101,114,115,64,110,101,119,115,114,101,118,105,101,119,46,99,111,109,34,62,114,101,110,111,108,101,116,116,101,114,115,64,110,101,119,115,114,101,118,105,101,119,46,99,111,109,60,47,97,62)) } </script>, and we’ll tell the world.