Abstract
The Evan and Kathy Thompson Photograph Collection depicts Beatty, Nevada, Rhyolite, Nevada, and Keane Wonder Mine, California around 1925. The photographs include the Rhyolite Bottle House, mining operations in Rhyolite and Keane Wonder Mine, and citizens of Rhyolite.
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Date
Extent
Related People/Corporations
Scope and Contents Note
The Evan and Kathy Thompson Photograph Collection depicts Beatty, Nevada, Rhyolite, Nevada, and Keane Wonder Mine, California around 1925. The photographs include the Rhyolite Bottle House, mining operations in Rhyolite and Keane Wonder Mine, and citizens of Rhyolite.
Access Note
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
Materials in this collection may be protected by copyrights and other rights. See Reproductions and Use on the UNLV Special Collections and Archives website for more information about reproductions and permissions to publish.
Arrangement
Materials are roughly arranged by subject.
Biographical / Historical Note
Evan and Kathy Thompson were the proprietors of the Bottle House in Rhyolite, Nevada until 1989. In the mid-1950s, Evan's grandparents, Tommy and Mary Thompson, purchased the Bottle House from Louis J. Murphy and Bessie Stratton Moffat, who had leased the house after it was renovated by Paramount Pictures for a film in 1925. The house was originally built by Rhyolite resident Tom Kelly in 1905, and it reportedly took 20,000 beer, whiskey, soda, and medicine bottles, held together with adobe mortar, to construct the house. Tommy and Mary Thompson lived in the house and operated it as a museum and relic shop. Later, Evan and Kathy Thompson also lived in the house, and they were the last to do so. After 1989, the town site was managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In 2005, the year of the Bottle House's centennial, the house was renovated by the Friends of Rhyolite's Bottles, the Central Nevada Museum, and the Beatty Museum.
Sources:
"Vernacular Architecture in Nevada," Online Nevada Encyclopedia. March 18, 2009. http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/vernacular-architecture-nevada
"Tom Kelly’s Bottle House: The Largest of Three Built in Rhyolite," Rhyolitesite.com. August 2010. https://www.rhyolitesite.com/bottle1.html. Accessed September 25, 2015.
"Rhyolite, Nevada Bottle Building," Legends of America. http://www.legendsofamerica.com/nv-quirky.html. Accessed September 25, 2015.
Preferred Citation
Evan and Kathy Thompson Photograph Collection, approximately 1925. PH-00042. Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Acquisition Note
Materials were donated in 1976 by Evan Thompson III and Kathy Thompson; accession number 1976-237.
Processing Note
Materials were processed by Special Collections staff. In 2015, as part of a legacy finding aid conversion project, Lindsay Oden wrote the collection description in compliance with current professional standards.