HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Bob McCracken relaxes at the PVT. Advertisement

Bob McCracken was only in town for a few hours, but that was long enough for him to swing by the Pahrump Museum and get an idea for yet another book.

McCracken had seen an archive of old photographs of early Nevadans and immediately appreciated the makings of a book.

"I think it will be an important book in terms of the history of Pahrump because it's the beginnings," McCracken said.

Coming up with book ideas is nothing new for the Nevada historian.

"I get all kinds of interesting ideas all the time, it's almost frustrating," McCracken said. "But once I start a project, I always finish it."

McCracken, who is known particularly for his columns about Nye County and Nevada history, has his own share of personal history rooted in the state.

He first came to Nevada from Colorado, where he was born, when in his father went to Ely in 1953 to work at the mine.

The following summer, McCracken's father bought interest in a mine in Warm Springs.

"He was chasing a dream, the usual miner's dream," McCracken said.

While McCracken's father attempted to get the mine for several years, McCracken, living in Colorado again, would come out during the summers to work with him.

In 1958, his father went to work for the Nevada Test Site, and McCracken, while earning his bachelor's degree in psychology at Colorado State University, once again worked summers with his dad.

McCracken went on to earn his masters and doctoral degrees, also from CSU, in anthropology.

"I've always been interested in studying how people think, and how they live, without putting any judgments on them," McCracken said.

After going on to teach in Tennessee, in 1982 McCracken found himself back in Nevada, living in Tonopah.

It was a few years later that Nye County representatives began to express interest in a history of Nye County.

So in 1986 McCracken began traveling around to Nye County communities, taking 80 formal oral histories from the people who had lived it personally.

"That's where I learned most of my history of the area," McCracken said. "We worked up a pretty good archive of people's history."

After several years, the historian had traversed the county, being refused an interview only twice and covering most of the county's major communities.

The only exceptions were Ione, Gabbs and Belmont.

Almost everyone McCracken interviewed was over the age of 55, and most of them were at least 60.

The historian takes pride in the fact that the oral histories, which are available at almost every Nye County library, have given the people he spoke and listened to a chance to live on.

"There's something about the written word. I have a saying, that if it's not in writing, it doesn't exist," McCracken said. "Most of the people are deceased now, and so those people have been given a little bit of immortality."

The county and state history, and the people who lived it, have left a mark that's still present today, according to McCracken.

"My reading of the history of the area is that it is the last of the American frontier," McCracken said. "And those frontier values are still, to a great extent, present here."

McCracken defines frontier values as "that can-do spirit."

"People were really tough that came here," McCracken said, recalling how one person he interviewed described early Pahrump as "'the farthest place from nowhere you can get.'"

"In the Nye County I knew as a youth, the attitude was that you can do anything you're big enough to do as long as you're not stepping on anyone's toes," McCracken said.

McCracken sees writing as a way to not only to preserve history but also as a way to foster understanding and contribute to humanity's future.

"It helps me communicate with people about who they are as humans, as residents of Nye County, as Nevadans, as Americans," McCracken said. "If you can have a clear understanding of who we are, than you can make better decisions ... I've always been interested in the social sciences. I combined my academic interests with my interest in people."

Fortunately for his readers, McCracken doesn't have any plans to stop writing any time soon.

"When I retire I'll be ready to go," McCracken said. "I don't believe in retirement."