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A close look at the histories of the major communities in Nye County shows that each can trace its origin to one or two individuals strongly infused with a can-do attitude.

The can-do attitude says: The future is filled with possibility. I can do that. There's no good reason why my dreams can't come true.

The can-do spirit was at the core of our frontier value system, and in no place on earth did it develop as strongly as it did in the United States, especially in the West.

This attitude is strikingly evident in Joseph and Margaret Yount's development of their ranch in Pahrump Valley. Their 1876 acquisition of a property in the middle of nowhere that became the giant Manse Ranch is the seed from which the town of Pahrump has grown over the past 130 years.

It was the irrepressible optimism of prospectors Frank "Shorty" Harris and Ed Cross that led to the discovery of gold in the Bullfrog Hills and the subsequent founding of the towns of Rhyolite and Beatty.

Jim Butler's can-do attitude led to his discovery of silver and the founding of Tonopah in 1900. Five years later, John C. Humphrey's chance discovery of gold on the west side of the Toquima Range 40 miles north of Tonopah, and his and his associates' efforts to take advantage of the discovery, led to the founding of the town of Manhattan.

And Louis Gordon saw opportunity when gold was discovered some dozen miles north of Manhattan in 1906 and became the founding father of both mining and community development at Round Mountain.

No sign of a "no can do" attitude anywhere among these people. They didn't know they couldn't construct the future.

And what about the history of Amargosa Valley? We find plenty of the can-do attitude there.

If ever there was a can-do man, it was Ralph Jacobus "Dad" Fairbanks. He was born in 1857 in Payson, Utah, and in 1883 the Mormon Church called on him to help establish a new colony on the Sevier River not far from Richfield, Utah.

Later, Dad went on to purchase the Ash Meadows spring and nearby property in the Amargosa Valley that now bears the Fairbanks name. Dad established a mercantile and freighting business at Ash Meadows.

In 1908, he moved to the boomtown of Greenwater and in 1910 moved his business to Shoshone, Calif., which up to then had been little more than an Indian camp. In 1920, when he was past 70, Dad picked up and moved south and founded yet another town: Baker, Calif.

In 1905, U.S. Sen. William A. Clark, for sure a can-do fellow, had completed his San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (SP, LA, & SL), which linked Los Angeles and Salt Lake City by way of what became Las Vegas. He then constructed the Las Vegas and Tonopah (LV&T) Railroad, which crossed the Amargosa Valley.

Beginning in 1872 another can-do person, F. M. "Borax" Smith, made a big discovery of borax at Teal's Marsh in Esmeralda County, and went on to be a huge force in area borax production.

In 1905, Smith began construction of his Tonopah and Tidewater (T&T) Railroad, which ran from Ludlow, Calif., where it connected with the Santa Fe Railroad tracks, to Gold Center in the Amargosa Valley, five miles south of Beatty. It reached Gold Center in 1907.

The T&T Railroad's first stop inside the Nevada border was at Leeland, just south of Big Dune. The next stop was Carrara, then Gold Center.

The presence of the T&T, however, did not attract settlers to the valley. In 1915, the railroad established an experimental farm at Leeland in an effort to prove the valley's agricultural potential, but still few, if any, settlers came.

In 1919, Nevada Sen. Key Pittman, who had been at Tonopah and Round Mountain in their boomtown days, pushed through a change in federal law that made it easier to homestead Nevada's desert land.

Several officials of the Pacific Coast Borax Co., which owned the T&T, took advantage of the changes and filed on land in the Amargosa Valley. The claims were patented in 1927 and passed to the borax company, and the claims became the T&T Ranch. There was modest activity at the ranch until the T&T operations ceased in mid-1940.

Hopes for future valley development were temporarily derailed.

In about 1947, Gordon and Billie Bettles obtained an option to purchase the T&T Ranch from the Pacific Coast Borax Co., which still owned the property. In the late 1940s, the Bettles were the only residents of the Amargosa farm area. Both Gordon and Billie, of course, had the pioneering spirit.

And then there was Hank Records. Born in Folsom, N.M., in 1918, he grew up in the New Mexico-Colorado border area and took a degree in metallurgical engineering from Penn State University.

During World War II he was an officer with the 1884th Aviation Engineering Battalion and helped build runways at Tulagi in the Solomon Islands and on Palau, Guam and Okinawa. After the war, Hank said he and his brother Robert "were still dreaming about mining ... I was going to hit the proverbial deal."

In 1950 Hank helped develop a mine at Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley. That year, he and Robert had occasion to be in Beatty and drove through the Amargosa Valley.

Both of the pioneering men were enchanted by the economic potential of the valley. Soon, both filed on land under Pittman's Desert Land Act. In 1953, they began drilling wells and then putting up buildings.

The Records brothers figured large in the subsequent development of the Amargosa Valley. Always strong community boosters, they were sparkplugs in the creation of the Valley Electric Cooperative.

Power was turned on in the valley in 1963.

I had the honor of getting to know Hank fairly well for an extended period of time beginning about 20 years ago. I considered Hank a very good friend and he remains an inspiration to me. He was what I call a true Nevadan -- and really, you don't have to be from Nevada to be a true Nevadan; it's a state of mind, the best of the frontier way of looking at things.

I have never met anyone with a more indomitable spirit than Hank's. He expressed an infectious enthusiasm for life and the joy of the chase of life's opportunities. Hank was an optimist, the quintessential can-do man.

He was a stranger to the "no can do" view of the world. Failure was not a word in his vocabulary. He had his failures, of course, but he shrugged them off like water from an Ash Meadow duck's back.

Hank was a pioneer -- one who, by example, leads others to the bright future. He understood that civilization rises on the efforts of those who seize opportunity and stagnates or falls with those who tremble and hesitate.

Hank looked forward to and relished the huge opportunities he believed Yucca Mountain presented. At the time of his death he was passionately involved in developing a large cement production capacity in the Amargosa Valley to supply the cement needs of Yucca Mountain. No whining about spent nuclear fuel from this man of the West.

Hank Records was cast from the same mold as John C. Fremont, the Younts, Jim Butler and Dad Fairbanks. These can-do people are our heroes; we are derived from them and in that sense, we are descended from good stock.

And the dream lives on.

Right now there is the potential for Nye County to move to a new era in its history. Humankind faces two huge problems: energy and water. Nye County has the potential to become a major producer of both -- yes, water.

The potential also exists for Nye County to become a major research center, focusing on the solution of humanity's energy and water problems. Imagine Science City, a city in Amargosa Valley, devoted to solving the world's most pressing problems -- the 21st century equivalent to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Much is possible with a can-do attitude.