University of Nevada, Reno — the Quad & the API Night Market

Silver money built the campus; today it throws Reno's biggest Asian night.

Key facts

The University of Nevada, Reno was founded in 1874 (first in Elko) and moved to Reno in 1885 — Nevada's land-grant university, on the hill to your right / east.
Its Mackay School of Mines is named for John Mackay, a Comstock Lode silver baron (the building funded by his son Clarence) — the same Comstock the Chinese-built Virginia & Truckee Railroad was built to serve.
Every October since 2022, the campus hosts the API Night Market — Asian & Pacific Islander food, dance, and K-pop, run by the Multicultural Center — the living Asian Reno at full volume.

Narration transcript

On your right, up the hill, is the University of Nevada, Reno — the state's original university, started back in 1874 and settled here in Reno in the 1880s. The green heart of it is the Quad, and the grand old building at the top is the Mackay School of Mines. It's named for John Mackay, who made a staggering fortune in silver out of the Comstock Lode, south of here — and that's a quiet full-circle moment, because the railroad the Chinese crews built, the Virginia and Truckee, was built precisely to haul that Comstock silver. The silver and the railroad and the Chinese labour are all the same story.

Here's the part I like best. Every October, this campus throws the API Night Market — Asian and Pacific Islander food stalls, dance, K-pop, a few thousand people. It's loud and young and alive, and it's the clearest answer to the quiet ground we just left downtown: the community Reno tried to erase in 1908 is here, thriving, throwing the best party in town. If you've got time, park and walk the Quad. Otherwise, one more stop.