Lost and found

There's something about living in Nevada that gives strength to dreams of finding treasures. Those who've been around awhile can name people who hit paydirt: John Mackay and George Hearst come to mind. So when someone says something valuable has been lost and then rediscovered, a Nevadan's ears perk up.

But this treasure we’re talking about isn’t gold. This is a find with a somewhat sinister provenance. Its story began up on the Comstock at Gold Hill with a newspaper run by Nevada historian and journalist David Toll, the Gold Hill News, beginning publication in 1974. The main shooter was a guy named Bill Germino, a talented, well-known and prolific photographer.

He was also a violent man who died in Folsom Prison after having been found guilty of second degree attempted murder, having beating Daniel Yuhasz severely with a club in June 1998. As compensation to Yuhasz’ family, Germino’s assets, including some 12,000 images, were sold at auction.

Years later, David Toll’s son, Sam, heard the images—stored in a black box weighing some 80 pounds—were for sale. He snapped it up, sight unseen.

While it is difficult to memorialize a killer, these images call for commemoration, not because they remind most of us of Germino, but because they remind us of a Nevada that existed 30 and 40 years ago—a Nevada that many of us have never known.

Sam Toll has been working to create a series of objects—a coffee table book, postcards and calendars—that incorporate these fantastic images. In order to advance this project, he’s created a kickstarter project, http://kck.st/19H6k79. Kickstarter is a way of financing a project that either raises sufficient funds or the money reverts to the donor.

Readers will have to judge for themselves whether this project is worthy of support. But as any of those old Comstock Lode miners would have told you, treasure can indeed come from dark places.

—D. Brian Burghart