Porter, Carrie Townley

Carrie Townley Porter was born July 07, 1935 in Central Texas near present-day Fort Hood. Townley finished high school in Austin, Texas and attended the University of Texas in Austin for two years. She left college to get married, and she and her geologist husband lived in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. They had three children with no reliable child care so Townley became a housewife for a period. The Townleys lived a full and active life in Las Vegas, Nevada and Carrie Townley eventually got hired as a substitute teacher. Townley subbed at Gibson Junior High School and decided to finish her degree at Nevada Southern University (now the University of Nevada Las Vegas- UNLV) after her principal told her that if she could do that, he would have a job waiting for her. After receiving her bachelor’s degree, she returned to teaching math at Gibson Jr. High. She started an archaeology club on her own and, along with Russ Elliott, the first Trailblazer Club (junior history) in the state. She got students involved in the history of the Native Americans in the area and took them on field trips, which gave them a chance to participate in an archeological dig. Townley has worked in Special Collections in the UNLV Lied Library as an archivist, with Sierra Pacific Power Company as a records analyst, and at Caesar’s Tahoe as records administrator. She has also been very deeply involved with the Nevada Women’s History Project since 1994. Townley still holds onto her records management consulting firm, which she started in 1985.