The story of one of the most rugged and resilient Nevada families, as told by one of the state’s most enduring photo-journalists, comes to the Nevada State Museum, Carson City, Thursday, Aug. 13, as photographer Jeff Scheid premieres a one-year exhibit, “Ranching in the High Desert: Five Generations, One Family.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal photojournalist Jeff Scheid documented branding at the Twin Springs Ranch in Central Nevada. A gallery exhibit of his photos, along with copy by R-J journalist Jennifer Robinson, called “Ranching on the High Desert: Five Generations, One Family” is current showing at the Nevada State Museum, Carson City. PHOTO BY JENNY SCHEID
The exhibit text and labels that explain Scheid’s photos are written by journalist Jennifer Robison. The exhibit debuts in the museum’s South Changing Gallery with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. that is free and open to the public.
The exhibit shows the day-to-day operations of a ranching family, including teaching the skills of roundup and branding to the family’s younger generation. It explores the role of ranching in Nevada history, cowboys, rodeo traditions and rural Nevada.
“Ranching was an economic mainstay in the region before statehood and before flashier industries such as mining and gaming began to define Nevada’s business climate,” Robison said. “Few families embody that ability to adapt more than Nye County’s Fallini clan. The Fallinis have ranched central Nevada’s arid desert for 150 years – for as long as there’s been a Nevada.”
“Ensuring survival of the family’s Twin Springs Ranch has required careful stewardship of the countryside, healthy respect for a fickle Mother Nature and, increasingly, political and policy skill to maneuver ever-changing federal regulations on land use in rural Nevada,” Robison said.
For more than three decades, Scheid has been photographing Las Vegas. He said he chased down the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang and Chicago mobster Tony “The Ant” Spilotro walking defiantly with his defense attorney Oscar Goodman. He photographed the UNLV Running Rebels basketball team on the road to the national championship. He captured some of the most famous celebrities on the Las Vegas Strip. In a way no one else could, Scheid has been there to tell the story of Las Vegas.
It takes two cowboys to lasso and bring down a 200-pound calf for branding. ItÕs grueling work in 90-degree heat, through a nonstop scrum of charging livestock and constant dust clouds that leave some ranch hands with pneumonia. PHOTO BY JEFF SCHEID
Scheid was born and raised in eastern Montana where the badlands meet the prairie. Inspired by his mother’s work as a journalist, he took his first newspaper job in Glendive, Mont.
“I’m a visual anthropologist photographing Nevada and Las Vegas,” Scheid says.
The museum is open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, at 600 North Carson St., Carson City. Admission is $8 for adults; free for museum members and ages 17 and younger.
Contact Deborah Stevenson at dstevenson@nevadaculture.org or (775) 687-4810, at ext. 237.
Sisters Anna Fallini Berg and Corrina Fallini Jackson stop for a snack. Anna is eating the Rocky Mountain oysters her mother prepared the night before, fresh from newly castrated calves. Corrina sticks with an apple.PHOTO BY JEFF SCHEID
Ranch hand Nate Easterday walks his horse in a corral at Twin Springs Ranch as the sun rises on the Reveille Mountains. Twin Springs has operated along the Reveille Range since the late 1860s — nearly as long as Nevada has been a state. PHOTO BY JEFF SCHEID
Giovanni Berg,6, gives love to a horse before branding begins. Giovanni is named for his great-great-grandfather, Giovanni Fallini, an Italian immigrant who moved to Nevada from Italy in the 1860s and began Twin Springs Ranch. PHOTO BY JEFF SCHEID
Horses get a water break as cowboys share ranching stories. In one of many nods to the modern era, Twin Springs rounds up temporary ranch hands for branding season through 21st Century methods such as Facebook status updates. PHOTO BY JEFF SCHEID
