Historic House Museums in Nevada

The Bowers Mansion was built in 1863 by Lemuel "Sandy" Bowers and his wife, Eilley, and is the finest example of the homes built in Nevada by the new millionaires of the Comstock mining boom.

The museum is a 30-acre site that features a modern exhibit hall with a timeline exhibit about southern Nevada from pre-historic to modern times and a collection of restored historic buildings that depict daily life from different decades in Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson, and Goldfield.

Using a California Gold Rush inheritance, enigmatic San Francisco bon vivant Geo. Whittell Jr. constructed his Castle-in-the-Sky, Thunderbird Lodge, in the midst of a vast land holding spanning the entire length of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shoreline. Vistors experience the animal barns, guest cottages, a stone Card House perched high on the bluff above a man-made lagoon, and a 600' secret tunnel leading to the steel boathouse blasted from a granite hillside, home to the famous 55' long art-deco wooden speedboat THUNDERBIRD. The Thunderbird Lodge National Historic Site is open to the public for guided tours, weddings, special and corporate events.

The Marzen House Museum features antique mining equipment, including several large-scale pieces that can be found on the museum grounds, vintage home fixtures and other antiquities from pioneer homes, relics and artifacts dating back to the region’s earliest Native American inhabitants, and a display dedicated to the Immigrant Trail. One of the museum’s most interesting displays is a representation of an Indian cave known locally as the Lovelock Cave.

The 1860 home of silver king John Mackay includes collections of silver and original furnishings.