History
Guest Column by Washoe Valley resident Gayle Bowers
Editors Note: Dog Rock is located on the south side of Eastlake Blvd near South Beach at Washoe Lake. Slide Mountain has been known to have landslides reported in the local press press since the 1860s and probably many times before that.
Many of us remember back before Dog Rock got the first paint job. Some saw the dog in the rock immediately, and others not until the paint job miraculously appeared. It has most likely put a smile on many faces for decades.
Most recently at a “Pow Wow” with Washoe County where citizens stood up to the urban style development in our rural area, white folks and indigenous gathered to extoll the virtues of nature among other water course items yet to be disclosed. It was there that the story of the Washo People living in village, on a meadow, along Ophir Creek, were buried alive under a rock slide. It is not known which year of sliding consumed the village, but oral tribal tradition carried that memory forward by remembering the dead with Dog Rock which they saw as Wolf Rock, back in the day.
It was a wolf for the indigenous people as there was no paint store in Washoe Valley at the time. Now when driving past Dog Rock, I look forward for the wolf and remember ALL the people who died under the slide because Slide Mountain has an unstable nature, and to build anything, pine bark structures or subdivisions, in the path of a water course on any of the streams that come down that mountain may prove fatal again someday.
When I first heard this story, it changed my relationship with Dog Rock for the better. Now I hear the spirits howl. I also feel them wag their tails on occasion. My quandary comes because a wolf has pointed ears and now the rock is a hound.
Maybe someone still knows the truth?
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