Carson City man has plan to save American Flat
By Frank X. Mullen Jr., Reno Gazette-Journal
Neal A. Dach admits he has no background in developing tourist attractions.
The Carson City native is a former Army bomb detection and disposal specialist, an Iraq war veteran and a graduate student in neuroscience at Harvard University. But when it comes to the historic American Flat ruin near Virginia City, he has one major question:
If millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money are going to be spent on the 52-acre site, should they be used to turn the area into a revenue-generating tourist attraction or to blast it from the face of the earth?
“Demolishing the United Comstock Merger Mill devalues Nevada history,” said Dach of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s plan to turn the 89-year-old complex of eight buildings back into a sagebrush desert.